Achilles Heel
by suitcase design winner
Summary: It's too hard to get to Miles Edgeworth for revenge. But that defense attorney he was talking to seems so vulnerable in comparion...
1. Chapter 1

_(A/N: this story is in progress on the PW Kink Meme. It's going to have a little romance (P/E) but a lot of violence, hence the rating! I've never written in this fandom before, but I thought it would be easier to follow the story here than just as comments on the meme, so I set up a account. This was written in response to a prompt that wanted someone to take revenge on Edgeworth by kidnapping and torturing Phoenix. Enjoy! I'll post more chapters when I can!)_

"Mr. Edgeworth!"

Miles Edgeworth turned at the familiar voice. After the day's success in the courtroom, it was easy to offer Gumshoe a hint of a smile. "Detective. My compliments to the force. The evidence your investigation turned up was beyond question."

Wright had tried to discredit their findings, of course, but all his cross-examinations had accomplished was to remove one of the Rhodes brothers from consideration as a murder suspect. The first brother had been found guilty of all three homicides, and Miles had still managed to get an accomplice conviction on the second.

"Thanks, Mr. Edgeworth," Gumshoe said. _If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging._ "We tried real hard to get it for you."

The murders had been unspeakably brutal, and Wright's voice had shaken more than once as he pressed the witnesses. When it became clear that one brother must have stayed out there to baby their ancient car's engine, Miles was happy to let Wright ferret out the truth of Second Brother: Not Actually a Murderer. In return, he'd cut through Wright's weak protestations and pinned the murders firmly on one brother and the escape on the other.

Wright would be upset, of course, but Miles was in a wonderful mood. Justice had been served, to each man according to the precise crime he'd committed. Their victims' cries had not gone ignored.

"You should be commended," Miles assured Gumshoe. "My report will be glowing." Catching sight of dark hair over a blue suit, he offered Gumshoe another hint of a smile. "Now, if you'll excuse me." It wasn't that he wanted to _gloat_, but he did want to... offer Wright a helpful assessment of his performance. Courtroom battles didn't seem complete without a post-verdict talk with Phoenix Wright. And he really wanted to have one. Especially after he'd won.

Gumshoe began to nod, then started. "Wait, Mr. Edgeworth! I nearly forgot. I came over here for a reason." He dug through his cavernous pockets, frowning, and Miles looked for something else to occupy his attention as he waited.

Above the heads of the departing crowd in the lobby, Miles managed to meet Wright's eyes. Wright nodded, solemn, and began to make his way toward them. Good.

There was also a dark glare coming from a corner of the lobby, but Miles ignored it. He had, after all, earned one man a death sentence that day, and so he anticipated those reactions. Any prosecutor who put away criminals for anything worse than a parking violation had to be prepared.

"Here!" Gumshoe said proudly, and thrust his fist toward Miles with an envelope extended. The sudden movement nearly caught Wright in the side of the head. Gumshoe echoed his yelp. "W-Watch it, pal!"

Miles allowed himself a larger smirk as he read Gumshoe's letter. Halfway through he snorted and crumpled the paper, but Gumshoe snagged it before he could throw it away. "That seemed real serious," Gumshoe said. "It came from the sister of those crooks."

"Yes, I used my infamous powers of deduction to notice where she signed her name." Miles retrieved the letter from Gumshoe's hand. Perhaps he'd shred it, instead. "Thank you, Detective Gumshoe. Again, your work on this case was appreciated."

Gumshoe might be a fool, but he knew a firm dismissal when he heard one. With one last proud smile, he nodded and left the attorneys alone.

"Good arguments today," Wright said, with what at least sounded like sincerity.

"Oh? You haven't come to call me a monster for twisting the evidence and sending an innocent man to his death? I'm disappointed, Wright. Is your sense of moral outrage slipping?" If so, Miles would need to find some other way to goad him toward mistakes in the courtroom. It was good to face a friend behind the defense's desk. They knew each other's strengths and weaknesses, and still respected each other after even brutal matches.

"No."

"No?"

"They killed those people," Wright said simply. "One held the knife while one just got him away from the scene of the crime, but they worked together and killed all those people."

Miles' eyes narrowed. He admitted it so easily? "Then why on earth did you take this case? Why argue so vehemently against my witnesses, if you thought your clients were guilty?"

"By the end of the first day I knew they were guilty of something. But something told me that they weren't both guilty of _murder_ like they'd been charged with, and I wanted to find out the truth." Wright shrugged. For a man who'd lost ninety percent of his case, he didn't look too distraught. "I saved a man who didn't earn the death penalty under the law, and I'm glad for that... but I'll admit, I'm not going to lose sleep over the idea of him going to jail for a long, long time."

Miles couldn't help but smile again. Really? He cared that much about the ten percent of his case that he'd won? Phoenix Wright certainly was an idealist. Of course, Miles had been accused of the very same thing, thanks to his recent willingness to pursue hard truths over an easy conviction, but that was hardly the same.

"Soooo," Wright began, with that look on his face like he was going to suggest a noisy post-case dinner with everyone involved.

_None of that, please._ "I have no idea how you came up with the idea to question the family's neighbor." That neighbor was a mechanic by trade, who'd pleaded with the siblings to let him repair their noisy, smoking car before it died somewhere on the freeway. "How did you even meet him?"

"Uh..."

Miles decided not to ask. Wright had probably been snooping around the family's house for evidence, only to accidentally fall over the neighbor's picket fence while running away from a bee.

Wright stayed silent, too... as he snatched the letter from Miles' hand before Miles could react. When Miles did recover and made a grab for his stolen possession, Wright handed it off to Maya, who'd appeared at his side. "Edgeworth, this sounds serious," Wright said, frowning. "Are you going to show it to the police?"

Miles laughed. They thought that letter constituted a serious threat? They'd never survive a career as prosecutors.

Maya's forehead furrowed as she read the letter out loud. "Hello, Mr. Edgeworth. You killed my brother today. I want to talk to you. Meet me under the tallest palm in Vista Park tonight at eleven PM, or you'll live to regret it."

"Edgeworth, she's going to try to hurt you," Wright said intensely.

With a tolerant smile, Miles replied, "Of course I can see that she would hurt me... if I were foolish enough to listen to her demands."

"She does say she'll make you regret it if you don't show up," Maya said uncertainly.

"A week without a death threat is a week when I probably haven't put anyone away," Miles said, shrugging. "The vast majority of those threats are clearly bluffs. Ms. Rhodes, though..."

Lucy Rhodes had misrepresented herself as a witness and tried to clear her brothers' names. Her testimony was picked apart as both men found its holes, but she'd nimbly avoided perjury charges, which was more than most people in her situation would have managed. Lucy was clever, determined, had the same ruthless gleam in her eyes as her brothers... and wasn't under police control.

Miles tapped his chin thoughtfully. "If I had to guess, I'd say that Ms. Rhodes has every intention of killing me."

Wright and Maya both jerked back, horrified. "B-b-but!" Wright protested.

"You need to get Detective Gumshoe back!" Maya said. "And have him be your bodyguard or something!"

_Or I could hire a real bodyguard... if it were even necessary._ "Where is my office located?" Miles asked.

"Uh, kinda near a corner of two hallways..." Wright trailed off.

"Many floors up, inside a building," Miles corrected, "that is crawling with armed guards and metal detectors. Where is my home?"

"Uh..." This time, that was all Wright said. Maya stayed thoughtfully silent.

_...Oh. No wonder they're not answering. I've never actually invited anyone over to see it._ Miles cleared his throat. "It's also well off the ground, in a building with secured entry and a doorman. Everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by security. This isn't by chance. Lucy Rhodes isn't the first person to threaten revenge after a conviction and she won't be the last."

Maya bit her thumbnail. "Should she be arrested?"

"On what charge? She very carefully avoided making a death threat in her letter, and the implied threat isn't enough for a conviction, or even to hold her on." Miles smirked. "Give her a week, and all of her outrage will be focused on whatever guards her brothers don't like. The threats never seem to last past that first call from prison."

"And you're okay with this?" Wright asked in disbelief.

Miles shrugged. "I can't say that I enjoy it, but it's a necessary evil."

Wright still looked vaguely ill. Maya gnawed her thumbnail more.

"Dangerous criminals associate with other dangerous criminals, and we seldom lock up an entire fleet of them with a single case. The ones left on the streets will naturally look for revenge." Oh, the two of them looked ready to cry! This was absurd, and more than a little insulting. Did they really think he was so breakable? "The job I do is worth the risk, because it means that some of them do get put away."

"Wow, Mr. Edgeworth," Maya said. "You really sound like you care about this."

"You saw those crime scene photos," Edgeworth said. Innocents' blood had made Pollack paintings against the walls. "Those men will never have a chance to repeat what they did on that day, and yes, that is something I care about. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should go behind some of those security doors before Ms. Rhodes stops simply glaring at me and tries to pull an officer's gun from its holster."

Wright and Maya spun on their heels. Lucy's glower was visible even from across the room, burning like some dark sun, and each of them grabbed one of Miles' arms and tried to drag him away. "Come on, Mr. Edgeworth!" Maya said as she tugged. "She's here!"

"She's been watching us all this time," Miles said, annoyed. "Just because you overlooked her doesn't mean that I did."

"Come on!" Wright insisted. "You can't just let her come after you! You could, uh..."

"Stay with Nick!" Maya suggested. "She doesn't know where he lives!"

"Yeah!" Wright said. "Stay with wait what?"

Miles snorted. "So you think it would be safer for me to forgo my well-secured home in exchange for the couch of an apartment that _you_ can afford."

"I'm sure Nick would take the couch and let you have the bed," Maya said.

"Uh, can we talk about this a little more, first?" Wright asked. Maya glared at him, and, abashed, he said, "Please stay at my place tonight, Edgeworth, and yes you can have the bed."

Miles' irritation eased. Yes, they were being totally illogical, but their fear for him was plain to see. The idea of Phoenix Wright sprawled across some poorly-stuffed couch just to keep him out of danger was... unsettling. Yes, it was thoughtful and kind, but Miles Edgeworth simply wasn't a fan of unexpected developments. And Wright—Phoenix—offering Miles his bed just to keep him safe was most definitely unexpected. "I appreciate the offer," Miles said, as nicely as he knew how. "Truly. But the best thing I can do after a letter like that is to go behind the security I've already arranged. I know that it will hold up. It's been tested."

"Oh, you had the police run tests on it and stuff?" Maya asked happily, but faltered a second later. "No... that's not what you meant, is it?"

"People like her have tried to kill you," Phoenix said. With that hurt puppydog look over Miles' safety, it was hard to even think of him as 'Wright' at all. "They've really tried."

"And once they did," Miles said more lightly than he felt, "they all got arrested, too. If Ms. Rhodes is foolish enough to make an attempt on my life, she'll be joining her brothers shortly." Jokes weren't going to lessen their worry. He sighed, and lowered his guard enough to admit, "I'm not... all right with the threats. They do worry me. But if I have to deal with them as part of putting away men like the Rhodes brothers, I will. And in a week, it'll be better."

"You're really brave, Mr. Edgeworth," Maya said. Miles felt his cheeks grow warm. These two could be so _emotional._

"What have people done?" Phoenix demanded in a low voice. "If they got arrested afterward, what have they tried?"

Miles hesitated. "Usually, it's lurking outside a door with a knife and several empty beer bottles, or something similarly straightforward. On the cases that do actually leave me concerned, well... I've learned to have my groceries delivered and dry cleaning picked up for a while."

"And this one has you concerned," Phoenix said.

Risking a glance at Lucy Rhodes showed her still glaring at him. Miles swallowed. _She blatantly lied on the witness stand. A total fabrication like I've seldom seen. The judge was ready to lock her up for perjury, and yet she came prepared with an adequate defense._ "I am concerned."

"Please, Mr. Edgeworth," Maya pleaded with him, tugging at his sleeve. "Let Gumshoe arrest her for something and keep her locked up overnight, okay? They can find something. They can... can try for perjury again."

"That would just make her anger last longer. Really, I should be going. I _do_ want to get home." The lobby was nearly empty, and Miles felt more exposed by the minute now that he'd admitted to his fear. No, not fear, he wouldn't allow fear. His unease. His completely reasonable _concern_.

Phoenix caught the edge in his voice and nodded. "Stay safe, all right?" he murmured, still in that low tone that wouldn't carry to anyone but the three of them. "After what her brothers were capable of..."

Miles bowed his head. "Trust me, those photos are still deeply embedded in my memories." He had no desire to see if a taste for knifework ran in the family. Looking away, he bit his lip. "Thank you for offering me a place to stay tonight, even if it was misguided." Misguided, but sweet. The thought of sleeping in Phoenix Wright's bed, though... now, that was ridiculous enough to almost put another smile on his face.

"Nick could come stay with you tonight, instead," Maya said thoughtfully, one finger on her chin.

Miles snorted. "And now I'm the one giving up my bed in favor of the couch? I'm hoping for a good night's sleep." He waited for Phoenix to raise a similar protest, but the man actually looked to be considering it. "Go home, Wright."

"But-"

"Go home." Phoenix opened his mouth to protest. "Home."

"Stay safe," Phoenix relented, and actually flung one arm around Miles and patted him on the back. It was the least intimate, most socially acceptable embrace Phoenix could give him, but Miles still froze at the contact. "I plan for a full acquittal on my next case, and I want to see your face when I beat you again."

Now this sort of display, Miles understood. He smirked as Phoenix stepped back from him. "Get used to today's taste of losing. I'm sure you'll become intimately familiar with it."

"Jerk," Phoenix said affectionately.

"I do try." Miles gestured farewell, forcing himself not to look at Lucy Rhodes, and said one last time, "Remember: go home, Wright." He turned, gestured for a security guard to accompany him to his car, and left the duo standing in the lobby.

For the rest of his life, Miles Edgeworth would wish that he'd allowed Phoenix to stay over that night.


	2. Chapter 2

It was going to be a good day, Phoenix Wright blearily thought as he woke up in the warm afterglow of a dream about sex and doughnuts. The wet spot on his pajama bottoms had yet to cool and there was only a tiny speck of drool on his pillow. Excellent: all of the benefits, few of the drawbacks. He stretched, rolled out of bed, and rinsed off his boxers before throwing them in the hamper.

"Lookin' good," he told himself as he stopped in front of his mirror, naked and flexing. All of the takeout food from his recent cases wasn't showing up anywhere around his midsection. With a wink and a grin at the mirror, Phoenix shot a pair of fingerguns at it and climbed into the shower.

_I wonder where we'll get our next case?_ he mused as he scrubbed. His lips pursed thoughtfully in the steam. Phoenix was still glad he'd taken the Rhodes case, even if he'd felt vaguely dirty by ten minutes into their first meeting at the detention center. He'd promised their sister that he'd protect her brothers and Lucy had been very convincing when she came to him in tears. She'd seemed ten years younger and infinitely more innocent when she wrung that promise out of him. She'd reminded him of Maya, of Ema. _...I might have a weak spot for desperate little sisters._

The right verdicts needed to be handed down to the right people. Jude Rhodes was a vile, dangerous man, but he'd been accused of slicing up people he'd never been near. Phoenix wasn't necessarily happy about keeping _him_ safe, but keeping the state on its toes for accuracy was a good thing for future defendants. And it wasn't like Jude's life was going to be very much fun for the foreseeable future.

Still, standing up for those guys and keeping one of them alive hadn't made him many friends. The newspapers had been all over this case, and he'd been named more than once as the attorney fighting for Public Enemies One and Two. Ugh. What if only serious bad guys looking for legal loopholes sought him out, now? He'd taken this case to make it easier for real innocents, but who knew if they'd even want to come near him?

As soon as the worry built, it ebbed back into his pleasant sex-and-doughnuts haze. He probably wasn't popular among a lot of people, but now even more accused who thought their cases were helpless would be aware of his name. Yeah. Any publicity was good publicity.

Why, maybe he'd go in to the office and see two dozen calls waiting in his voicemail, and every last person would be wrongly arrested. He smiled into the streaming water. Yeah. That was totally how this would work out. Everyone else might hate him, but this case would be like _catnip_ to the people he really wanted to defend.

Phoenix cranked off the shower. Time to get to work. He dried and styled his hair while whistling a jaunty tune, then picked out a shirt and suit that had been ironed somewhat recently. As he tugged his tie into place, his gaze fell back on the rumpled bed he'd recently left, and he pictured Edgeworth making it with perfect hospital corners.

What? Phoenix laughed. Oh, right. He and Maya had actually invited Miles Edgeworth to stay over with him. Wasn't that crazy? What on earth had compelled them to...

Memories returned like an avalanche, and Phoenix froze. _Someone was going to kill him. I wanted him here because someone was going to try to kill him, and... shit, shit, shit! I totally forgot!_ What if Lucy had tried to kill him right after he skipped their meeting? What if Edgeworth was already hurt or missing... or worse?

He looked around wildly for his phone, but it was nowhere to be seen. _Shit!_ Phoenix darted for the living room. There was his cell where he'd left it on the coffee table, and he moved to scoop it up, fingertips itching to dial.

His back exploded into pain as something struck it, hard.

Phoenix tried to cry out, but nothing in his body wanted to work: not muscles, not lungs, not brain. He barely managed to get one arm up to shield himself as he collapsed through the glass of his coffee table.

"Mr. Wright," said a familiar voice. Phoenix's blood pooled below him in a slow, warm ooze. It hurt to move. He hurt. All of him hurt. A foot rolled him roughly over, and Phoenix whimpered as glass dug into his back.

Lucy Rhodes smiled down at him. A metal pipe dropped from her hand and landed heavy on the carpet. Even now, she looked far more innocent than her brothers: younger than her twenty-three years, with big blue eyes and skin that freckled instead of tanned. Her dark hair hung in schoolgirl ringlets, looking out of place against a canvas camouflage coat. "Good morning," she sing-songed. "Did I wake you?"

Phoenix let out a noise that he meant to be a scream, but nothing worked right, still, and it came out as a gurgle. If his neighbors hadn't heard the breaking table, they wouldn't have heard that. _I actually ironed this shirt,_ he thought numbly, _and now I'm bleeding all over it. That's not fair._

"You're probably wondering why I'm here," Lucy said as she knelt, picked up a shard of glass, and casually twisted it into Phoenix's palm. He cried out at the fire running along his nerves, but she covered his mouth until the bloody tip of the glass hit carpet. "Well," she continued conversationally as he wept, "I have a score to settle."

_Edgeworth_, Phoenix thought, tears streaming, and was startled when she nodded. He'd moved his mouth against her hand, he realized a second later. She'd figured out the name from that.

"I knew I couldn't get to him directly," Lucy said as she dug for something in her coat's pocket. Phoenix tried to bolt from under her smaller body as she did, but he was still clumsy from the strike to his back and her knee sank onto his mangled hand so smoothly that she must have planned it. He collapsed onto crunching glass. His world was nothing but that agony in his palm as her knee ground down.

_A syringe_, Phoenix thought as he stared up at her with pain-glazed eyes. Shallow, quick breaths barely filled his lungs. That's what she'd been looking for: a syringe.

"And like I told Mr. Edgeworth," Lucy continued as she flicked out any air bubbles in the syringe and lifted Phoenix's other arm for injection, "he would be _living_ to regret his decision." A smile slid into place as she shot oblivion into his veins. "You... probably won't."

Phoenix tried to stay awake, he fought and clawed against the blackness seeping into his head, but it was no good. His last thought was to scream for everyone he cared about to run away from this lunatic, but his body was numb and nothing worked right.

Lucy kept smiling down at him as his eyes slid closed. His blood had splashed on her face. It looked like the crime scene photos.


	3. Chapter 3

"Leave them, I'm busy," said Miles Edgeworth, barely looking up from his work. "No. New files go in my inbox, not dumped on my desk. No. That's the outbox. New items go in the inbox."

A pair of navy-clad legs hurried out. Miles idly wondered what novice officer they'd sent to deliver those case files. It had to be someone new, to act so skittish; anyone experienced would recognize that he was in a perfectly welcoming mood.

"Mr. Edgeworth?" asked a new voice when he was considering how harsh a sentence to recommend pursuing for an embezzler who'd stolen half a million dollars from the city.

This time, he didn't even look up far enough to see the officer's shoes. "I'm busy." It was always harder to get strict sentences awarded for white collar crimes, but the state's case did seem very solid. Perhaps he could push for a truly worthwhile penalty and make an example of the person. Hmm.

"Mr. Edgeworth, please."

_That's not an officer._ Miles looked up. Maya Fey's tear-streaked face made his gut clench with fear, but his voice was eerily calm when he asked, "Ms. Fey, what is it?"

She said the answer he'd known was coming. "Nick... they... he didn't come in... didn't answer... and... and..." She made a strange noise halfway between a sob and a hiccup. "Blood."

"Blood," Miles repeated. It felt as if he were floating ten feet above his body.

"Everywhere," she whispered, and shut her eyes. Tears beaded on her lashes.

Miles swallowed and set aside his fountain pen before he snapped it. "Was there a body?"

Maya's eyes flew open and her mouth twisted. "What? How can you just ask about a... a _body_ like—"

"Was there a body?" Miles repeated, biting off every word cleanly.

"No," Maya spat.

Miles nodded and stood, his files forgotten. "My car is in the garage. You will direct me to his apartment. I'm sure you have a key and so I assume that's where this discovery took place." She only stood there, looking at him with eyes full of betrayal, and so Miles paused long enough to explain what he felt was obvious. "We both know what happened here, Ms. Fey. If Rhodes wanted to hurt me by killing him, there would have been a body right away. Otherwise, the longer she waited, the greater the chance that we'd find her first."

"So she doesn't want to kill Nick?" Maya whispered.

"If she did, she would have already done so."

Maya swallowed. "You're sure?"

He wished he was as sure as he sounded, truthfully; it still felt like he was floating. "Do you think I have insight into the criminal mind?"

"Yes..."

"Then trust me when I say that if no body was left to be discovered, that he's still alive." _Wright, if you prove me wrong this time, I will never forgive you._

Maya hesitated, then nodded. "I trust you." Her hands opened and closed uselessly. "I... I could have checked for myself, maybe, but I guess I just didn't want to find out that way. Find out for sure. Then there's no hope." Miles mmmed vaguely as Maya went on to babble about the very real risks of calling the recently departed. She must be talking about that spiritual medium work that he found so peculiar. Well, so long as Maya trusted him and didn't collapse into a sobbing, hiccuping mess again, she could believe anything she liked.

Once in the hallway, Maya naturally stopped in front of the elevator. Miles was nearly to the stairwell before he heard her rushing to catch up, and nodded brusquely when she apologized. _Elevators. Earthquakes._ Miles' mouth thinned as they pounded down the stairs. _And the murder of someone I care about._

The first was a daily annoyance he'd learned to work around. The second was terrifying but rare, even where he lived. The third was unspeakable, and was never supposed to happen again... but blood was everywhere, and once again his mind screamed at him that it was all his fault.

He had to try twice to put his car's key in the ignition. _My hands are actually shaking._ He closed his eyes, inhaled, and exhaled.

"Mr. Edgeworth," Maya said insistently, her seatbelt clicking into place.

"I need to collect myself before we set out on the road," he explained. His fingertips felt numb. _You are not allowed to be a murder victim, Phoenix Wright._ The thought of being handed an autopsy report for Phoenix made his gorge rise, and he swallowed hard. Anyone would hurt less. Anyone.

Anyone? The realization startled him. Although it was a foolish risk to add to his unstable state, he imagined being handed a similar report for Franziska. That hurt, but not as much.

_That's hypothetical,_ the rational side of his mind explained. _This is all too real._

"Mr. Edgeworth!"

"Did you come straight from his apartment?" Miles asked, one hand tight around the wheel and the other on the gear shift.

Maya relaxed at seeing his hands in place. "Yes. I called the police from there. When they came everyone shoved me off to the side, so I took a taxi to come get you."

He nodded. "Was Detective Gumshoe there?"

"Yes," Maya said with some question.

That was what he'd needed to hear. Miles reached into his glove compartment and retrieved the siren and lights Detective Gumshoe had provided him for emergency purposes. Gumshoe had said it was totally (probably) legal when the two of them needed to meet at a time-sensitive crime scene. Miles didn't trust that, of course, and had verified with the department that so long as he didn't make a habit of it, they'd look the other way if he needed to get somewhere quickly to gather the evidence for a conviction.

"What's his address?" Miles asked. Maya looked at the light on his dashboard, brow furrowed, and recited it.

"That looks like a police siren," she said uncertainly as he texted the address to another contact in the department. That way, any officers along their route would be alerted as to the authenticity of his light, despite the tiny red sports car it sat in.

Miles tucked away his phone and put that hand back on the gear shift. "It is," he said as he threw the car into reverse, screeched out of his parking spot, and shot out of the underground garage at a speed he knew was unsafe. "Turn it on before we're pulled over."

Maya looked pale, and one hand clutched her seatbelt as they wove through traffic, but she found the switch and flipped it.

_I forbid you to be dead,_ Miles thought as they sailed through red lights. Maya kept whimpering over close traffic calls, but he was beyond his earlier nerves and had achieved some sort of zen state. In Miles' mind, he was already at the apartment; this trip was a temporary distraction to be dispensed with as efficiently as possible.

There was no mistaking whether he'd found the right address. No other apartment building on that street would have its parking lot crowded with police cars. Miles slammed off the siren and flung open the car door. Maya, constrained by a sedan parked close on that side, squirmed out and ran after him.

_Look at this place,_ Miles thought sickly as they walked inside without challenge. _No doorman, no cameras._ "Show me the way."

Maya nodded. Miles was grateful when she walked past the elevator doors without stopping.

A detective in the hallway recognized him on sight and let them pass. There were characteristic scrapes on the doorknob and deadbolt, but not many. Either Rhodes was skilled at lockpicking or the tumblers didn't pose much of a challenge. The door stood half-open as officers worked inside, but Miles first took a few awful seconds to inspect the setting. Phoenix's door was around a corner in a short hallway, far from the elevators. She would have been left alone at her work.

"They're inside," Maya pointed out when he didn't move.

"I told him to go home," Miles whispered. "To go here." He hadn't meant to speak out loud. The words roared in his head.

Some sliver of accusation that was lingering in Maya's eyes softened at his guilt. "It's her fault. Not yours. But now Nick needs your help, okay? He needs you to focus."

_She's better in a crisis than she looks._ With a deep breath, Miles straightened his shoulders. "Of course. I plan to hunt down this criminal and give her absolutely everything to which the law says she's owed." Relief painted Maya's face as his voice approached its normal tone, and she shadowed Miles as he walked inside.

"Stop right there!" shouted a female voice. Dread pooled in Miles' stomach.

"You said Gumshoe was running this," he snapped at Maya.

"No, you asked if he was _here._"

Angel Starr walked up to the two of them, eyes narrowed. "I didn't authorize you to be on my crime scene, _Prosecutor_ Edgeworth."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Starr, I missed seeing the Lunchland truck outside, or I would have known to expect you." Oh no. He could smell blood. Wright's blood. Phoenix's blood. He felt ill.

Angel smiled thinly. "Was that a joke? Or do you still just ignore anyone in Criminal Affairs outside of your flunky and the chief?" Tossing her hair, she didn't wait for him to reply. "When news of what Gant had done came out, the force couldn't move fast enough to give me back my old job. They knew I'd have the most open-and-shut wrongful termination case in force history."

So, she'd been back for a while. She was very good on the hunt, but this was about to make his life an even deeper hell... and something else about Angel had him terrified for an entirely different reason. "Mr. Wright's assistant visited my office and asked me to come," Miles said. His eyes flicked toward the living room.

"Why?" Angel asked.

"He's smart!" Maya said. "And he's investigated things and—"

Angel's hand impacted Miles' chest when he took an unthinking step forward. "We need to inspect this crime scene before you ruin any of the evidence, Edgeworth."

"Get your hand off me," Miles gritted out.

"And he cares about Nick," Maya said. "Please, Ms. Starr."

"He doesn't care about anyone but himself."

"Dammit!" Miles yelled, and flung her hand away. Her eyes widened. "He and I were the ones who worked _together_ to get you your precious job back, _Detective_ Starr, I will not tolerate your accusations of how I feel about this situation, and I demand to know why you've been put in charge of this investigation!"

The other officers in the room stared at his emotional outburst. Angel, who'd looked just as stunned, scowled again at the last question. "I have an excellent record, and for you to—"

_"You are a homicide detective!"_ Had Miles been wrong when he'd told Maya that Phoenix had to still be alive? And was his voice really that loud? From how the silence afterward pressed on everyone in comparison, it must have been. He swallowed. When he spoke again, much softer, his anger was outweighed by fear. "I thought this was a kidnapping investigation. Not murder. Why were you assigned to it?"

Something in her eyes weighed answering him. After a long beat, Angel's expression softened. "Ms. Fey wasn't very coherent when she called in. Given that, and the victim's interest to the court, they assumed the worst and sent me and my team. It looks serious enough that I decided to maintain control since the investigation was already underway."

Maya spoke up hesitantly. "Mr. Edgeworth promised me that if they hadn't killed Nick right away, then he was probably still alive."

Tense, Miles waited for Angel's confirmation, and was relieved when she nodded. A detective like her had a myopic view of the law's full operation, but when it came to killers' minds in the thick of developing events, she was as sharp an expert as him. He hadn't realized what a blessing it would be to hear her reassurance. "This is not currently a murder investigation," Angel told Maya, quite sweetly. "We have a suspect we're trying to hunt down. The chief agrees that I'm a good person to be heading up this case."

Of course. "You're easily the youngest female homicide detective," Miles mused. He wasn't as uninformed about Criminal Affairs as she thought.

Angel shot him a suspicious look. Her hostility might have eased somewhat at his unplanned display of emotions, but she clearly still disliked him.

"Meaning," Miles continued, feeling more in control of himself with each word, "that you are unquestionably the best match on the force to predict the mindset of a twenty-three year old female potential killer."

Angel studied him for another second, and relaxed further. "Yes, that was our thinking."

"I'm not taking control of your investigation," Miles assured her. "But I... I'm invested in this case. I would like to conduct my own search. The more eyes that are looking, the better." It wasn't getting any easier to wait the longer he stood there. He itched to inspect further into the apartment.

"Too many cooks spoil the broth," Angel eventually said, "but sometimes you need a food critic to give you a different perspective."

Miles stared at her blankly.

Angel grimaced. "Sorry. Force of habit. All right, Edgeworth, you're allowed in. You know what I'll do if you remove or alter any evidence. I do owe you for taking down Gant." She began to gesture him further inside, but hesitated. "But I'm not doing it because of that."

_This is not the time to extend this conversation any further, woman!_ Miles waited impatiently.

"You've had recent contact with the suspect. You can provide me with useful information about her." Angel folded her arms and studied him. "And you looked ready to burst into tears."

"Do not mock me," Miles seethed.

"I wasn't mocking you. I was marveling over you behaving like a human being." With a jerk of her head, Angel motioned him inside. Miles rushed past her without bothering with a comeback, Maya close on his heels, but they both stopped short when they rounded the corner and saw the carnage in the living room.

"So... so this is what I found this morning," Maya said unsteadily.

Miles sought out her shoulder and squeezed it. He didn't know if he was trying to comfort her in some small way—he did like the girl well enough—or if he was trying to keep his balance on suddenly weak knees. A broken coffee table was scattered across the floor. Glass shards near the window caught slanting sunlight and sent tiny, glittering rainbows across the room. They made an obscene contrast to the smears coating the glass at the heart of the struggle.

_It's a crime scene. Focus. You're of no use to him if you can't focus._ "The blood at the center is still wet?" he asked, voice tight. Near the edges, everything had dried to sickly brown, but there was still a distinctly reddish spot in the middle.

Angel nodded, having stepped up beside him. "Yes. Sticky, at least."

Lucy would have caught Phoenix before he left for work. Maya would have waited a while before she grew worried and thought of darker explanations beyond construction delays and detours. She would have needed time to make the trip from the office to the apartment, and then the police had to arrive, and then she came to get him... Miles swallowed. That spot in the middle was still wet after all of that. "It appears as if a significant amount of blood was spilled."

Maya's shoulder flinched under his hand, and Miles cursed himself. "My throat is dry," he announced. "Ms. Fey, if you would please go get me some water. Be sure to ask a detective before you take any glasses." Maya nodded gratefully and slipped away, which caused Angel to shoot Miles a knowing look. He ignored it and, with a moment to steel his nerves, knelt near the glass.

One piece in particular caught his eye: large, clean on one end, and covered with blood on the other, despite laying well away from the stain on the rug. He leaned in closer to the clean end and saw the smudges he'd expected. "Have you taken the prints off this?" It was clear that the shard had been used like a knife, and that knowledge made his fists clench until his knuckles stood out as harsh white spots.

"Of course. The problem is that Lucy Rhodes has no prints on file to compare against when the analysis is complete."

Miles looked up. "That hardly seems possible."

Angel shrugged. "Don't ask me how, but she's kept her nose clean."

Miles turned back to the shard, frowned thoughtfully, and looked back up. "Wait. How exactly did she become your suspect? She's obviously the cause of this trouble, but how do _you_ know that already?"

"We got her name out of your assistant." Angel tilted her head. "She said something like 'I was worried about Mr. Edgeworth, not about Nick, this wasn't supposed to happen.' It took some digging before she calmed down enough to discuss it further, and we heard about Rhodes' behavior at the courthouse yesterday. It was clear that girl is as untrustworthy as week-old tuna."

Yes. That was the heart of it, wasn't it? _It should have been me. Not him._ Exhaling, Miles began to inspect the scene again, but soon straightened once more. "Where is Detective Gumshoe?"

"Asking people in the building whether they saw someone wheeling a box into the elevator this morning. The carpet was still holding on to two depressions that looked like wheel tracks, although they've faded by now. Our guess is a hand cart."

And someone had probably been all too happy to hold the elevator for the young girl who looked like she was struggling with moving out of her apartment. Miles nodded, accepting her assumption. "Did Gumshoe mention that Rhodes gave him a letter to deliver to me last night?"

Angel nodded. "Between that and Fey's comments, we haven't focused on anyone else. It seems more obvious than black spots on a bad banana."

Now that he'd identified what was so wrong about that letter, Miles hated himself deeply for not questioning her motives right there and then. "It is obvious," he muttered, "except that I somehow missed just how obvious she was being."

"Hmm?"

"Why did Lucy Rhodes use a member of the police force to deliver a physical message to a state prosecutor? She could have walked up to me and told me that I'd be sorry, but no: she left a trail." Miles stared at that bloody shard and tried not to picture it digging into Phoenix's body. "She deliberately left a trail. She wanted a record of what she's doing."

"I can't disagree with you," Angel eventually said, "but I can't accept that yet, either. It seems like a dumb move, and from the sound of things, she's no dummy. It could just be that she thought you'd call for security if she got too close."

Miles shook his head mutely. No, Lucy was no dummy. She'd done this for a reason. Rhodes had left a blatant trail of what she was doing, but he had no answer for why that would be, yet. Not being able to understand that reason had Miles feeling sicker than ever. If he couldn't outthink this woman, Phoenix had no chance.

_You are not allowed to be dead._

"I don't have that letter," Miles said. "I can't remember whether it ended up with Ms. Fey or Ph... the victim. If Maya has it, you should be able to lift prints off that to make the comparison." His searching vision caught a heavy metal bar left carelessly by the sofa, and Miles swallowed. The prints would be there, too. _What the hell did you do to him?_ "Every other hand that touched the letter does have prints on file, so you'll know what to discard. Myself, Ms. Maya Fey, Detective Dick Gumshoe, and... and Mr. Phoenix Wright."

"We'll ask Maya and cross our fingers, then," Angel said. She frowned. "Where is she, anyway? She was going to the kitchen, not France."

Miles straightened and gladly took the chance to turn away from the sight of Phoenix's blood. "Ms. Fey?" he asked cautiously as they moved toward the kitchen.

"I'm in here." Maya looked up when they arrived. She was talking with another detective, who was holding a plastic evidence bag into which he'd put... Miles swallowed hard.

"You're sure this was it?" the man asked. "The jacket worn by Lucille Rhodes at her brothers' trial?"

Maya stared, dead-eyed, at the evidence bag. "I'm sure."

There was no mistaking the camouflage coat inside it. It was too large for Lucy's frame, and so she'd worn it with the sleeves rolled up, just as these sleeves were. A pocket flap was worn thin in the same spot as hers, and the same stain was on the collar. The only difference from how she'd looked in court was the blood splattered across the jacket's front.

"I blew my nose and threw away the tissue," Maya explained, hugging herself. "That was in the trash can when I opened it."

"She obviously couldn't have worn that bloody jacket through the halls," Angel said uncertainly, "but... she left it here? Instead of taking it with her in that box?"

"She's leaving a trail," Miles said numbly. _And I don't know why._

"She's leaving a trail," Angel agreed a second later, discomfited. She looked down, and when she looked back up, uncertainty filled her eyes. "Mr. Edgeworth, I'll look forward to hearing anything you find during your independent investigation."

"I hope that I will be able to call in and hear what you've found, as well."

Angel nodded silently, looking too unsettled to insult him one last time.

"Here," Maya said, and pressed something into Miles' hands. The sight of a glass of water looked alien to him. Had he really asked for it? "What... what did you find out?"

He swallowed a long drink before answering. "I don't know."

It wasn't the answer Maya had wanted. Her brave, small smile faltered. "But he's still alive, right?"

Miles didn't trust his voice, just like he suddenly couldn't trust his wits. He nodded once, mutely, and hoped he wasn't lying. Was Phoenix Wright still alive? _I don't know._


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing Phoenix did upon waking was to cough a thin stream of bile onto somebody's shoes.

"Good," she said, and thrust a bottle at his lips. "You're awake." Water streamed into his mouth before he understood what was happening. The water that didn't end up on his shirt went down his throat the wrong way. It hurt to cough, but he couldn't stop hacking.

_Where am I?_ His vision wouldn't focus. Wherever he was, it was dark. _What's going on?_

Footsteps walked away. A door opened into blinding brightness, then closed just as quickly. His room seemed darker than before.

Phoenix shook his head and instantly wished he hadn't. _Need to think._ That was hard. Had his head ever pounded this much before?

He was sitting on something. His legs wouldn't move: was he tied to a chair? Behind him were his hands, also bound. _Focus._ Acknowledging their presence made one hand start throbbing, and Phoenix gasped as the pain increased with each heartbeat that he felt hotly in his palm. _Glass. Went through my hand... it was glass._

Memories slipped back to him as his vision adjusted. Lucy. It was Lucy Rhodes, and she'd come after him, not Edgeworth. _Didn't expect that one._

Lucidity brought more pain with it. In fresh throbs, he became aware of all the other cuts decorating his arms and back. None compared to his hand, but some of the cuts were still deep. If a shirt stiff with dark stains wasn't enough of a warning, his unending dizziness was a sure sign that he'd lost a lot of blood.

He swallowed and looked at the dull glint of the plastic water bottle on the ground. It was a shame he hadn't been able to drink more. He needed to increase his blood volume however he could, and being dehydrated wouldn't help.

_What did she hit me with?_ Phoenix groaned as a fresh wave of exhaustion crashed over him. Whatever had been in that syringe had a hell of a hangover. Inside that deadened state, he couldn't even feel fear. Not yet.

_They have to know I'm gone. Maya. Edgeworth. Gumshoe. Everyone. They'll come._ His eyes felt heavy again. He hoped it was drugs lingering in his system, and not the blood loss catching up with him, but Phoenix couldn't fight it either way. He slipped back into nothing and felt the world tilt.

The room was darker when he woke again, as dark as it had been behind his closed eyes, and Phoenix finally felt fear as he wondered if she'd blinded him. The drugs were gone and he was instantly aware of every cut and bruise on his battered body. "Hello?" he croaked through a dry throat. _Why can't I see anything?_ "Hello?" Phoenix tried again, more desperate, and bit back a sob of mingled agony and terror when only silence answered.

"Hello?" he whispered. "Hello!" he screamed.

_I'm going to die._ Phoenix struggled against the rough nylon ropes even as they sliced into bleeding cuts. He was a wild animal in a trap, unable to do anything but panic; if that limb had to come off to free him, so be it.

"This isn't what I expected of you, Mr. Phoenix Wright."

The words jolted him, and Phoenix's fragile psyche latched on to what he desperately wanted to be true. Surely that was the woman's voice he'd heard. "Franziska! Help me, please, you need to get me out of here. Quick. Before she comes back."

Light bloomed in front of him. Phoenix coughed on the acrid smoke of the match, and his heart sank when he saw dark curls instead of a sleek, pale bob. "Who's Franziska?" asked Lucy. Her head tilted, and a thin smile grew. "Some girl you like?"

"No. A lawyer," he croaked, wanting more water. "She... she calls people by their full names, so I thought..." So he'd hallucinated a von Karma coming to his rescue. Things were even more dire than he'd realized. "And I'd rather see her than you." That probably wasn't the smartest thing to say to the psycho who had him bound in her kidnapper's hideout, but fuck it, he was in _pain._

Lucy considered that for a second, then blew out the match. Light soon returned from a flashlight trained directly into Phoenix's eyes. It stabbed into the back of his skull and he flinched and turned away. She actually sounded disappointed when she spoke. "Oh."

He focused only on breathing until coherent thought returned. _That disappointment in her voice... she wanted Franziska to be someone I cared about. I, me. Is this not about Edgeworth, after all?_ "Why did you do this?" Phoenix asked. He was suddenly very glad that he hadn't said Maya's name. Hopefully Lucy saw her as his office assistant and nothing more.

"To hurt that son of a bitch who killed my brothers," Lucy said, and Phoenix's gut twisted. If this was about Phoenix like he'd hoped, she'd want to keep him alive to make the pain last. That would give people a chance to find him. But if it was only about someone else... well, killing him would probably make Edgeworth pretty sad.

"And," Lucy continued, bringing the flashlight closer until his vision was bright red behind his tightly shut eyelids, "to hurt that son of a bitch who didn't save them like he promised me."

Oh. Well. So it was partially about him. That was... encouraging?

"Only one got death row," Phoenix said dumbly. It felt very important to point out that she couldn't say her brothers were condemned to death, not in the plural. Maybe correcting that mistake would fix everything. _No. It won't. Nice try, though._

"Only one," Lucy repeated thickly. "Right. I only heard about how they're taking away _one_ of my brothers to death row." Her laugh was strained. "Except no, they took two. They took them both."

"Good behavior," Phoenix said. "Jude could... he could be out early." _Does seven or eight years count as early? If the comparison is a death sentence, maybe._ His hands felt numb behind him. They were probably tied too tightly.

Lucy backhanded him. With his eyes still shut Phoenix hadn't expected that, and stars exploded across the inside of his eyelids. Lucy hissed, sounding as pained as him. "I never do this," she said like she was talking to herself, and seeming very, very sad. "I never... they would..."

She grabbed his tie and wrenched his neck forward. "Everyone hates us," Lucy cried. "If you couldn't get Jude off, you were supposed to get him solitary!" A deep, thick sob tore out of her. "He's going to die in there just like Aaron! He is going to die!"

Phoenix ignored the heat in his cheek where she'd struck it and forced his eyes open. Tears spilled freely down Lucy's face. She looked thirteen years old again. After everything she'd done to him with a dark glee, it was an unsettling sight.

"They're both gone," she choked out. "You're supposed to... to find someone else to pin it on. That's what you do. I checked. You always find someone else and they go to jail instead." She wiped at her snotty nose. "And the way that son of a bitch in pink _smirked_ as he won," Lucy growled, and her sadness fell away.

_No no no no no, stay sad, don't get mad, it's better when you're sad, you're not stabby when you're sad._

"Everyone hates us," Lucy repeated like it meant something, and stood. To Phoenix's relief, she walked away. When she opened the door, he could make out an indigo sky with a scattering of stars beyond it. It was already well into night and no one had found him.

He swallowed and looked at where that empty water bottle would be hidden in the shadows. Phoenix tried to flex his hands despite the pain. It felt like one hand moved, but he couldn't be sure.

Right, then.

It was the night of day one and he was still alive.

That would have to be enough.


	5. Chapter 5

The Rhodes' house was much the same as Miles remembered it. During the trial he'd visited there once to sweep for additional evidence, but had paid the surroundings little mind beyond confirming the accusations against the brothers that were so very obvious. It was still a rundown house in a bad part of town, with a spotted lawn and holes in the garage door, but it felt intimidating in a way that it never had before.

_What if he's in there?_ Miles wondered, though he discarded the notion. Lucy was deliberately leaving a trail; she wasn't actually an idiot. "Be careful, we don't know that the home is still safe. She's had time since the trial to leave traps for anyone checking on her."

"I'm still coming with you," Maya said. Miles had never thought that she wouldn't.

"What are we looking for?" she asked him thirty minutes later, after a cautious entry that turned into a fruitless search.

"I don't know," he said. "A lead for where she might have gone. A number for some contact. Anything." The three siblings didn't seem to have much money to spare, and there were no overlooked receipts giving any indication of where Lucy might have taken Phoenix. Nor were there photographs of a favorite destination, or a land line phone with messages to check.

What _was_ there was useless. A few old movie posters covered cracked walls. Aaron's room had an breathtakingly explicit calendar on the wall; Miles pursed his lips in disdain, while Maya tilted her head. Jude's tiny room was a tornado of fast food bags and copies of Maxim. Lucy's, the master bedroom, was perfectly ordered and sparely furnished.

Nothing told him anything that he didn't already know.

"Detective," Miles said, his phone to his ear. "Where are you headed now?"

"We're checking out where the brothers murdered those guys," Gumshoe said.

Miles frowned. "Why?"

"To review the film archives, sounds like. They're hoping a video there will be some sort of clue. Do... do you think that sounds like a good plan, Mr. Edgeworth?"

Miles nodded slowly. "Yes." The murders had taken place on the lot of a discount film studio, inside a warehouse where old prints of commercials and near-softcore porn were stored. His kneejerk reaction was to doubt they'd find anything useful in the countless files, but those videos had never been touched during the murder investigation. They'd never bothered to try to tie the brothers to the studio, since any sort of deeper motive hadn't been needed and nothing about the place was in the public's eye. Clearly, Lucy was more involved with her brothers' lives than they'd originally thought. Perhaps there was something there, after all. "Was this Detective Starr's idea?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Edgeworth. She heard you were going to their house and said we'd check out the studio, instead." Gumshoe sounded vaguely nervous that he would be asked to choose between the two people in command, one of whom he reported to on that day and the other who made regular assessments of his salary. There was no need for him to worry, though Miles didn't bother reassuring him.

_Time to review._ One: Angel Starr, despite her earlier hostility, trusted Miles to search the suspect's house, the most likely source of leads. Two: she'd come up with an idea that he'd never thought of. Normally, Miles would be left uneasy at someone finding an avenue he'd overlooked, particularly when he'd already been left floundering by Lucy's bewildering behavior. But as the two of them were working together, any fresh plan of Angel's was a positive, as was the fact that she apparently trusted his investigative skills. One of the countless knots inside his chest loosened. "Thank you, Detective. We'll be in touch."

"What now?" Maya asked when he hung up. "I don't see a single thing that points to where she might be."

"No," Miles was forced to agree. Given how many cases Maya had helped Phoenix with, her identical cluelessness was also reassuring. Not all of them could be floundering. Certainly, they couldn't. "There are no things, and so at this point, I propose we look for _people_ who might give us a lead. Someone in the neighborhood will know something."

If anyone did, they weren't willing to share that information. The house of the neighbor who'd stood as a witness was dark, and he didn't pick up when Miles called the number provided to the court. Everyone else looked with suspicion at the strangers; most made fun of their clothes, annoyingly. A few crossed the street to avoid them. "I stay away from those Rhodes kids," one old man said when he opened his door. "Anyone with a brain does. You got yourself mixed up with Lucifer? I bet it's your own damn fault."

"Lucifer," Miles repeated, brow furrowed. "That's the name by which people here call Lucy Rhodes?" A familiar nickname might signify any number of things. At the least, it had to mean some sort of local notoriety for the family, or Lucy herself. That meant knowledge.

The man snorted and slammed the door. No answer came when Miles pounded on it, and he eventually gave up and looked tiredly at Maya. She asked, "Do you think the mechanic neighbor is hiding something?" Dark, bruised-looking circles were under her eyes. She looked even more exhausted than Miles felt.

"Possibly." Or he might have wanted to put some distance between him and that house after one of his neighbors was sentenced to lethal injection. Who could say?

"So... what now?" Maya asked, as her stomach rumbled loudly. She flinched and rested a hand over her torso. "Sorry."

Miles checked the time and frowned. "What we do now is stop field work and consider our options for the morning. Clear minds will be key for stopping this woman, and I refuse to let an obvious answer slip past me." _Slip past me again, anyway._

"No!" Maya said, scowling. "We haven't found Nick yet! And we can't just stop to eat and sleep when he's in trouble. I... I'm sorry that my stomach growled, I didn't really mean it. It's not important. Focus on him, okay?"

"If you starve yourself, that's all you'll be able to focus on. You can't constantly talk about food like you do and then expect me to believe that you can ignore it today. Come on."

Maya opened her mouth to protest, but jolted when an alarm screeched. Miles swore and ran. Two coltishly young men scrambled off into the darkening evening as Miles reached his car and turned off the alarm. Grumbling, he knelt to check the underside of the vehicle.

"I guess your car stands out around here as much as we do," Maya said.

"Yes, it does," Miles said grimly, standing. There were definite advantages that department detectives had during field work, in their aggressively unremarkable clothes and cars. No one in this rundown neighborhood would have crossed the street to stay away from someone who looked like Dick Gumshoe. "No fluids are leaking and I don't see anything that's been attached to the body." Maya looked confused, and so he explained, "They must simply have been trying to steal it, not sabotage it."

Maya flinched. "You were really worried that... wow. Okay."

"Stand back," Miles said, to be on the safe side, and clicked the remote starter. When the engine purred to life and nothing seemed to be wrong, he dropped his hand from where he'd held it protectively in front of Maya. "All right. Let's go." She hesitated, then slid into the passenger's seat.

As they pulled out, Miles glanced at the police siren still attached to his dashboard and sighed. He could speed home if he wanted; the force would give him plenty of leeway right then. Phoenix Wright, for all the trouble he caused the Prosecutors' Office and the LAPD by extension, was still respected. The entire headquarters had to be in quite a state ever since the news had hit.

Speeding would do no good, though. It would only raise the chances of an accident with someone who didn't clear the road in time, and then where would Phoenix be without Miles hunting for him? _Not that I'm much help today_, Miles thought grimly.

Maya was uncharacteristically quiet, and so he was left along with his thoughts. _I have to do this. I just... I have to._ Over the past years he'd learned to fail, but this was a challenge in which he had to once again earn a perfect triumph. There was some bitter irony in it being Phoenix who'd taught Miles how to fail in the first place. Now, Phoenix was the one person who needed Miles to be flawless. Relentless.

_And now I'm the one who's going to save him._

"What do you want?" Miles asked as he pulled into a driveway.

Maya looked owlishly up at the In-N-Out sign like she'd never seen it before. "Burgers," she said slowly.

"Yes, I know you like them. Even the courthouse janitors probably know that by now. What do you want?" She bit her lip and Miles frowned. "I don't want to block the driveway for other people if you're not ready. What do you want?" As he understood, this place carried very little _but_ burgers. All the girl needed to do was to say how many she wanted, with how many orders of fries.

"I..."

He cranked the wheel and turned into the nearest parking space. "Here," Miles said, and thrust a handful of bills at her. "Go inside and order there, so you can study the menu. Then I can drop you off at your home and we can resume our search tomorrow." She studied her hands and his eyebrows dipped. "Ms. Fey, you're wasting..."

When she lifted her face and Miles saw the tears in her eyes, his terse words died. "Go home," Maya repeated shakily. "I... okay..."

Silence filled the car for a long beat. Thinking back to her reaction at him checking his car for sabotage, Miles nodded once, slowly. "Maya," he ventured, "would you prefer to stay at my condominium tonight?"

What he could now recognize as fear ebbed from her eyes. "Your condo with major security that no one can get through?" Maya asked shakily.

"That would be the one." _The one whose safety I withheld from Phoenix. I suppose I owe this to her._

"You're sure you don't mind?" Maya tugged a lock of hair. "I can sleep on the couch if you want, I won't be any trouble."

Well, he'd take her up on that offer if she was willing to make it. "It will be no trouble at all. Please, I insist. Besides, it only makes sense; that way, we can get the earliest, most efficient start possible." She still hesitated, and he added, "We'll stop at a convenience store on the way to my building, so that you can pick up your own toiletries to use." A man's toothbrush was sacred.

That broke the dam, and she laughed nervously and nodded. "Okay, thank you. Yes, Mr. Edgeworth, please, thank you. I would like that very much." Exhaling, Maya managed to smile and threw off her seatbelt. "I'll be right back."

He hadn't realized the money he'd given her would buy so many hamburgers. "Not in the car," Miles said when she tried to begin eating, on every block after that, and again when he parked at the convenience store. Fortunately, they were only minutes away from his building, and she managed to hold back her complaints until they were safely parked and had climbed to the third floor.

"Dog," Maya said in surprise as Miles opened the door, promptly hung up his jacket in the hallway closet, and knelt for the greeting he knew would be coming. "There's a dog. A... big dog."

Miles ruffled floppy ears affectionately. Another knot in his chest loosened. "Her name is Pess, and I believe she smells what you're holding." Sure enough, Pess' wet nose nudged against Maya's bag, and the dog sat back on her haunches in expectation. Her thick tail wagged against the slick hardwood floors.

"Can I give her some?" Maya asked as she pried a bit of meat free of one burger.

"Certainly, but not much. I don't want to upset her digestion. Here, come in to the kitchen and feed her on the tile." Miles led the way past the living room he seldom used, gesturing at the couch on which Maya could sleep, before showing her to the sterile, sleek kitchen all in dark wood and silvery granite. "I don't have a dining table, but there are stools there for the counter."

Maya hopped up obligingly, then bent over to hand a tiny bit of beef to Pess. "It looks like there's room for a table over there," she said through a mouthful, and gestured to a far spot in the room. The empty alcove had a glittering view of downtown Los Angeles as its windows lit; they were the only 'stars' he ever saw in the city's nights. "A small one, I guess."

"There is," Miles allowed. "I just don't have need for it, and there are many other demands on my attention besides furniture shopping." And he'd never had the patience to complete a full contract with an interior decorator. They could be so sensitive about criticism.

"Oh," Maya said, chewing. She swallowed, but crammed in a wad of fries as soon as that mouthful was gone. "That makes sense, I guess."

Now that he'd said that, Miles felt awkward. Well, it _wasn't_ like he made a habit of hosting dinner parties. Besides, he traveled a lot. A seat at the counter for caffeine and the morning news was all he needed from his kitchen. Irritated for no reason he could explain, Miles took the other stool and grabbed the bag. "I paid for these," he reminded Maya over her protests.

"The Demon Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth eats In-N-Out burgers?" Maya asked, with a small but real smile.

That smile vanished under his glare. "Do not use that name. That time in my life has passed."

"Sorry," Maya said meekly. "It's just a funny sight." She reclaimed the remaining food and silently continued feeding Pess, who seemed to have decided that Maya was her new best friend.

"I'm hungry and everything in my refrigerator would need to be prepared." Really, it was as simple as that. Miles chewed thoughtfully. Had he eaten that day? No, he'd started off the day with tea, had a bottle or two of water during the search, and nothing else. That was unacceptable; just as his body needed sleep to fuel this rescue, so did it need food. Even though his stomach roiled at knowing that Phoenix was injured and suffering, he forced himself to swallow, then chew, then swallow again. _Tomorrow morning, eggs. We'll need the protein._ He hoped the food would stay down.

By the time he finished, Maya had given nearly an entire burger to Pess in finger-sized bits. He didn't have the heart to protest. Hopefully her stomach wouldn't be too upset. "Why do you have a dog this big?" Maya asked, ruffling Pess' fur.

"I prefer large dogs."

"Okay, but you live in a condo."

"Which doesn't affect my preference in dogs."

Maya huffed. "Big dogs need yards and fetch and walkies and stuff, everyone knows that."

"Walkies?" Miles repeated. "Well, I do hire a dog _walker_ to take Pess out for two long walks each day. She's very good. Her company has excellent security screening." Maya shot him that same look as before, the one that had made him self-conscious about not filling that alcove with a dining table. "And I walk her myself on the weekends, of course."

"What about when you travel?"

"There's a sitting service, or she comes with me, and..." The wrapper crumpled in his hands and Miles turned toward Maya, glaring. "Do you have some problem with how I treat my dog?"

She froze. A half-eaten fry dangled from one corner of her mouth. Slowly, very slowly, Maya reached up and removed it. With the same care she set it on a discarded wrapper, still moving like he was a snake ready to strike. "No. I swear. I'm just trying to make awkward small talk and I didn't really want to talk about murder trials." She studied her hands. "Or Nick."

And there was precious little else for them to talk about. (Well. One thing, but he was glad he'd tidied up his Blu-Ray sets and tucked them neatly away.) "That is the issue, isn't it," Miles allowed. "We've spent all day thinking about Wright, and now we find ourselves pointlessly discussing anything else." Referring to the man by his surname made everything feel slightly more normal, like Phoenix—_dammit_—might call him at any moment and sigh about the new catastrophe Larry had caused, and whether Miles could put up bail.

"But that's wrong," Maya mumbled. "We shouldn't stop thinking about him. Not even for a second. I bet he can't stop thinking about whatever's going on."

A wet nose nudged against his hand and Miles instinctively began rubbing Pess' head. The familiar action centered him. "I can only speak for myself, but even as I take time to recharge, my resolve never weakens."

She considered that. "You mean that even though we're taking a break to eat and not go starving and nutso, we're still actually working on finding Nick."

"Yes, that's what I said." It still felt like a near thing that he'd be able to keep down what he'd eaten, and so Miles stood to put on water to boil. "Tea?" he asked as he filled the kettle. He needed tea, and a shower, and to bend the rules that night and let Pess sleep on his bed.

"Please." Maya was quiet as he busied himself with preparing their drinks. With her cup in hand, she murmured, "We didn't find anything today. We wasted the whole day, Mr. Edgeworth, and we didn't get any closer."

He let the warmth of the cup seep into his palms. "That's not true," Miles said. "We were able to discount many possible... distractions. That will help our focus tomorrow."

Maya looked at him flatly. "Running into a bunch of dead ends doesn't count."

Fine. "We found out that Lucy has an extremely unflattering nickname in that neighborhood," he offered. "That of the devil himself. And that everyone on that streets knows to stay away from 'the Rhodes kids.'"

"Okay, so what? Everyone knows that they're a bunch of jerks and keeps their distance." Maya took a swig of her tea and instantly looked to regret it.

With his mind coming into focus after that godawful day, and his stomach settling, Miles managed a thin smile. He'd missed this connection before now. "We just had our course of action set for tomorrow, Maya, because there is a very obvious question that now needs to be answered."

She blinked. "What?" she asked thickly, tongue still sore from her mouthful of hot tea.

"If everyone on that street does their best to stay away from the Rhodes family... then why did their neighbor testify that he offered to fix their car for free?" He let his smile grow as Maya sat up straighter. "Exactly. Something doesn't add up, and I intend to find out why. He is going to be our compass pointing straight to that girl... and Phoenix Wright."

"Okay!" Maya said, and pointed straight at Pess, who licked her outstretched finger. "Big dog—"

"Pess."

"Big Pess, we're going to save Nick!"

Pess barked, sharing her excitement, and Miles wondered if his neighbors would complain. The thought faded as quickly as it had come. Tonight, they could deal. "Time for bed. I'll get started on tracking down that neighbor, and with any luck, we'll have a lead waiting for us in the morning. We'll be well rested and ready to go."

"How are you going to be well rested if you're working on tracking him down?"

Miles pulled out his phone. "Detective Gumshoe can claim more thundering idiocy than the entirety of a Congressional session, but if you tell him you need something specific, he _will_ find it."

"And he cares about Nick," Maya added. She hesitated. "We all do."

Miles hesitated, too, and dialed without arguing. The girl smiled in a way that made him feel more awkward than any discussion of dinner tables or dog walking, and Miles cleared his throat as he waited for Gumshoe to answer. "We passed the linen closet. There are sheets and blankets, you can make up a bed on the... yes, Detective. I have a very important job for you tonight."

Maya actually squeezed his arm as she left. She looked as surprised at her own actions as Miles felt, and it took him a beat to realize that Gumshoe was slobbering at the chance to prove himself. "Dylan Sanders. Find him."

"Sanders? The guy who testified about the car?"

"Yes. We have reason to believe he was much closer to the Rhodes family than he let on. If anyone knows where she's gone to, it will probably be him. However, his house is dark and he's not answering his phone, so we're not sure where he might be."

"All right, Mr. Edgeworth," Gumshoe said uncertainly. Miles couldn't blame him; he'd been asked to find a man in one of the largest cities on the planet, without a single lead. "Let me go ask Detective Starr if it's all right if I work on your idea, instead."

Miles waited patiently until Gumshoe returned. Given that Gumshoe hadn't jumped on the chance to provide him with all the information they'd uncovered at the studio, he doubted that there was much of anything to share, and so Angel's permission came as small surprise. "Excellent. And Detective... I am putting my complete and total trust in you for this task. Do you understand me?"

He could practically _hear_ Gumshoe's eyes widen.

"Very good. Call me at seven AM with what you've discovered." Miles waited through the breathless promises. "We'll speak again then." He clicked off his phone, stared at the call duration until it blinked away, and rubbed eyes that he realized were burning. "I'm going to save him," he told Pess, whose tongue lolled out. It made her look like she was smiling.

Dry, aching eyes settled on the empty alcove that now looked lonely for a dinner table. Miles swallowed, then turned to the kitchen door. He could just hear Maya snapping out a blanket to release it from its neat folds. "Come on, girl," he told Pess. "You can sleep on the bed tonight."


	6. Chapter 6

"Hello?" Phoenix croaked as he woke, before he remembered that he shouldn't. Thin morning light seeped under the door. He'd passed out sometime in the middle of the night, when he could no longer keep watch against Lucy's surprise return.

He assessed his body's abused state reflexively. _That was a mistake._ It had to be nearly twenty-four hours that she'd had him, now, and the only water he'd had was what he'd coughed back out when she surprised him with that bottle. But his body had kept functioning like it needed to, and although he was glad to still be breathing and with a heartbeat, he wished he could have told his bladder to take it easy on the water already in his system.

He had to admit, some part of him had expected to be rescued by morning. Memories of de Killer had filled his mind as he struggled to stay awake. They'd taken days to find Maya, then, but de Killer was an expert. It didn't seem possible that some random young criminal from the streets of L.A. could match his kidnapping performance.

And, although Phoenix hardly wanted to praise the guy, de Killer had been possessed of a certain elegance and restraint. Except for being starved, Maya was all right while in his captivity. Phoenix was distinctly not all right, and he'd just _known_ that all of his friends would come to his rescue before it got much worse. He'd _known_ that this scenario couldn't have the worst possible ending. _Considering how many murder victims I've seen... maybe that was dumb. Wait. No. Don't think about murders. Don't think about autopsy reports._

_Don't think about being cold on a table as someone identifies your body._

_...Geez, I suck at this._

Lucy's treatment of him wasn't giving them much margin for error. One hand hurt in sharp prickles, but the other had gone numb and beyond. It was the one that had been pierced by glass, and he wasn't sure whether to be grateful for a respite from the pain or worry about how bad the damage was if he couldn't even feel it. The rest of his body ached like he'd been beaten everywhere with that steel rod he'd taken to his back. Whenever he shifted against the bonds holding his wrists and legs, he could feel his scabbed-over cuts threatening to tear open.

His groin was giving him another reason to stay still. _Definitely not de Killer's 'elegance and restraint'_, Phoenix thought unhappily as he squinted into the dim light in search of relief. Was that a bucket in the corner? His darkness-adjusted eyes said yes, and so he began the slow task of rocking and squirming his chair across the dirty ground. Each jolt hurt, but he tried to ignore them. He could worry about how to unzip once he was there.

He'd barely moved when the door slammed open. Phoenix flinched and turned from the light. Lucy's silhouette was a shapeless blob to him, and it took a few hard blinks before he could make her out after she closed the door. "Trying to run away?" she asked, studying the scrapes in the dirt. "Seems like that'd be easier if you could, you know." She made a show of bending down and inspecting his legs where they were bound to the chair. "Run."

Phoenix eyed her balefully and said nothing.

"You probably want this," Lucy said, and held up a bottle of water.

Swallowing instinctively, Phoenix felt a trickle of saliva form. That tiny bit of moisture was like a waterfall compared to the past night. He needed that water, but he was also ready to burst. "I need..."

"Yes?"

His shoulders sagged. He was kidnapped, bruised, and bloodied, and she knew very well all that she was doing to him. He could claw for respectability all he wanted, but Lucy was unlikely to give it. "I need to go to the bathroom," he mumbled. _I need to piss like a racehorse, but I can at least pretty things up that much._

"So, you don't need this water?" Lucy asked, dangling the bottle by its cap. A fat drop slid down the side and glittered in the low light. Its engorged form looked nearly obscene as it trailed in and out over the scalloped grip.

Phoenix's dry throat burned hotter as real pain stabbed through his groin. "I... yes, but please, just let me..."

"Do you really think I'm going to untie you?" Lucy asked, snorting.

"Please," Phoenix whimpered.

"I want to break you before we get started," Lucy said, almost cheerfully. She glanced behind her, saw the bucket Phoenix had been aiming for, and with one deliberate kick, knocked it on its side. Speaking over his agonized protests, she held the bottle in front of him again. This time, her fingernails curled into the thin plastic like it was a water balloon ready to burst. "Do you want this water?"

There was no pity in her eyes, only dark amusement. He knew that if he passed this up, she'd just let his dehydration set in further. And he couldn't hold out much longer, anyway. "Yes," Phoenix mumbled, and gave up. "I want the water."

She held it up at a better angle than the day before, or perhaps it was just that he was ready for it. Phoenix sucked eagerly at the water above him, feeling like some demented hamster. He just managed not to wince at how raw his bone-dry throat felt as he swallowed. As soon as his throat's pain eased, the stabbing pressure at his groin overtook it. Phoenix gave Lucy one last, pleading look, but he didn't stop drinking and she didn't offer the bucket she'd knocked over. _It's fine_, Phoenix told himself, and tried to believe it. _It's dark._ Warmth, shame, and a relief from pain overtook him as Phoenix's bladder released. All he could care about was the third.

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Lucy asked him as the bottled emptied and she flung it to a far corner.

The urine was cooling quickly. That was uncomfortable, but if she wasn't making a big deal about it, Phoenix would try to hide his embarrassment to match. "No. You are definitely not an idiot." _She probably wants to hear that, right? She likes thinking that she's smart. Oh, gross. It's on my sock._

"So why would I untie you to let you whip it out for that bucket, when you've probably got fifty pounds on me?"

"No, that wouldn't be a good idea," Phoenix admitted. Granted, he wasn't exactly in fighting condition, but he did outweigh this woman by a considerable margin. That alone could tip the balance in his favor... if he could only get loose.

She bent over, propping her hands on her thighs, and studied him nearly nose-to-nose. Lucy was just far enough back to jerk away if Phoenix tried to snap at her face, he noted. "And then you'd try to run away, and what would happen to my plan?"

"Fair enough," Phoenix said and began wiggling the dampened foot against the chair leg. He could feel the sock becoming more sodden by the second.

"What are you doing?" Lucy asked him, stepping back to inspect where he was working his foot. "I've got you tied really well, you're not going to get loose like that."

"I know." If she didn't have a problem with it, he'd keep wiggling. "It's. Um. Just that." Something about her expression demanded an answer, now. "Pee is running into my shoe and it's really gross."

"Oh." She tilted her head. "I suppose that makes sense." Lucy considered him for another long pause, then knelt and removed his shoe. To Phoenix's considerable surprise, she peeled off his soaked sock with the same efficiency.

_I didn't think this girl was squeamish, but she didn't even hesitate._

"Jude drinks a lot," she explained, standing and dusting off her hands. "Sometimes I've had to clean him up on... every end." Lucy tossed her hair. "Since you were probably wondering why it didn't bother me at all to take off your pee sock."

"That makes sense," Phoenix said, "but now I'm wondering why you did. I mean, you beat me up and kidnapped me and locked me in a..." Where was he, anyway? No windows, a floor that was either coated with dirt or made of it, and a deeply musty smell that he couldn't quite place. "In a shack." That seemed to be an appropriately catch-all term.

She shrugged. "Do you really want to know?"

Was he playing a more dangerous game right now than he realized? Something at the back of his mind, down in the caveman portion that cared only about 'eating food' and 'staying alive,' told Phoenix to shut up and stop poking the scary lady with a stick. His damnable lawyer curiosity, though, couldn't help but tease open all potential truth before him. "Yes, I do."

When she vanished through the door and returned with an axe, Phoenix's caveman brain screamed _I told you so_. "Forget it," he said weakly. "I changed my mind."

"I can't let you leave." Her hand flexed around the axe handle. "So. Option one: I keep you tied to that chair."

Phoenix liked the sound of option one.

"Option two: I bring this axe handle down on that bare foot, break every bone inside it, and keep you from running that way."

Yeah, option one sounded great.

"Option three."

Oh god.

"I cut off your foot."

Options one and two both sounded pretty good, now.

"That's why I took off your pee sock," Lucy finished, and hefted the axe.

"Option one!" Phoenix yelled. "Option one, option one, option one. I'm fine with the chair. Keep me tied to the chair. You want me to wet myself again? _I will do it._" Well, not right that second, he had to admit after a futile try, but soon enough. He'd be this girl's lawn sprinkler if it kept all his toes in place.

After a second, she lowered the axe. The handle's thick end thumped heavily against the dirt, and Phoenix gave silent thanks that it hadn't landed on him. "Fine. I don't need to do it yet."

"Yet?" Phoenix asked warily. His toes curled. Lucy's bloodlust had eased since she carved him open in his apartment, but she still sounded ready to carry out that threat at some point in the presumably near future. He was like something on a checklist: pick up eggs, take out trash, cut off attorney's foot. Or maybe she'd just crush it into a fine paste. _Dare to dream._

"If I break it, you'd just complain. It'd be annoying. And if I cut it off, well... you might die too fast. I'll wait until I call, I guess."

_Until you call who? Die too fast for what? Urgh, stop thinking, Phoenix, and just talk to this girl. You're never going to find a key to get out of here until you understand her more. Ask a question. Any question._ "So... who do you hate more, me or Edgeworth?" _Not that question._

She smirked. "Do you seriously need to ask?"

"Well, yes." He wasn't used to cross-examining people with his lap and one pant leg soaked. It was beyond distracting. "You seemed really mad that I didn't find someone else to 'pin this on.' Which, by the way, is not how I defend people!"

"You're an idiot," Lucy said, "you were clearly unprepared to be in that case, and I think you were making up everything you said as you went along."

_Not everything._

"But," she finished, "your opening statement was about proving my brothers' innocence. His was about 'removing a threat to decent society.'" Her hand flexed around the axe handle again. Lucy didn't need to say Edgeworth's name; her hatred blazed like a bonfire. "Any more questions?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Probably."

Phoenix swallowed. "And... and what would make you not kill me?"

"You're a tool. I don't mean that in the ancient slang sort of way, although it probably fits, too. No, you're a tool to make Prosecutor Edgeworth feel as awful as I did when I heard my brothers' verdicts. When he sees you, sees what I've done to you, I want him to feel like I've just jammed a knife into his chest. And if he doesn't react like I want, well..." Lucy's finger trailed a slow, threatening line across Phoenix's jugular. "I'll push him a little more."

"You're going to call Edgeworth," Phoenix realized. He'd wondered about calling friends with bigger weapons or a working getaway car; never had he considered that Lucy would phone up Miles Edgeworth himself. "You're going to tell him where I am." His eyes widened. "I'm not just a hostage. I'm bait. This is all so you can kill _him._"

"Ooh," Lucy said, and snapped her fingers. "So close."

He felt more lost than when he'd woken up in the dark. His adrenaline had fired with the presentation of a new goal to pursue: do whatever was needed to keep Edgeworth away from his shack and safe from Lucy's murder plans. But what could Phoenix do if he couldn't remotely follow her logic? If he didn't even know her ultimate goal? "So you're not going to kill him? You just... want to make him look at me?" This was a really strange plan, and that was saying something for an attorney who'd argued about a flying circus bust.

"Yes," Lucy said, and punched him in the face.

_"Fuck!"_ Phoenix yelped when his vision cleared and he didn't feel the immediate urge to vomit. He breathed quickly through his teeth until the worst of the pain faded. He was glad for Lucy's slight frame and slender arms; any harder, and that punch would have fractured his cheekbone. As was, he wasn't sure that it hadn't.

When she hit him a second time, right on the same spot, Phoenix's coherent thought fled as he felt something crack. His world shrank to a line of red-hot pain. When he became aware of the rest of his body again, Phoenix wasn't surprised that he was crying. He couldn't manage to swear, this time; all he could handle was tears and cringing like a beaten dog. The fragile thread of his dignity wanted to tamp down on the display he was giving Lucy, but that caveman hindbrain told him to keep going. If he looked ready to take another blow, she might give it. This time he listened to the caveman.

"Remember how I hit you yesterday?"

He nodded. The motion made him groan, and he had just enough sense not to flinch when she shone a flashlight against his face. She adjusted it so that it was lighting him from above like a spotlight, rather than drilling into his vision like some interrogation lamp. "Look," she ordered, and Phoenix opened one eye. The other felt sealed shut by tears and pain.

She was holding up a compact mirror. He'd never seen himself looking this bad and his recent crying jag hadn't helped. He was all cuts and deep shadows, with a dark bruise where she'd backhanded him the night before. The broken cheekbone was red and getting redder. That entire side of his face was going to end up swollen in shocking shades of new and dying blood.

"How long do you think it'll take for that bruise look as bad as it can possibly get?"

"I don't..." He tried to breathe. It was hard. "Couple of days?"

"Yeah, that was my guess. I'll give it a couple of days, and then I'll call him." She flashed a boxcutter and Phoenix couldn't help but flinch. "I'll hold off on the really bad stuff until he's on his way, so it's all fresh."

_I am well and truly fucked._

"Here," Lucy said, dug into her pocket, and held out her hand. Three small white tablets rested there. "I'll get more water for you to take this."

"What is it?" Phoenix asked warily.

"Aspirin."

"...What?" He didn't trust her kindness. At all.

From her smirk, she knew what he was thinking again. "It's a blood thinner. It'll help the bruise look worse when he sees you. And it'll make the next few hours a lot more pleasant for you, I suppose, so you probably want to take it."

"I can put up with the pain," Phoenix said thickly, with a mouth that didn't want to work right, "if it means you have less leverage to use against him. But," he said as Lucy's eyes flashed with renewed anger, "I'll take as much aspirin as you want if you answer me one question."

"Depends on the question."

Fair enough. "What are you going to do to Edgeworth?"

"What everyone's done to me."

"That's not a real answer."

She held out one tablet, and after a second, Phoenix realized her game and opened his mouth obediently, then swallowed the aspirin she placed on his tongue. "The only people who love me are my brothers. He took them away." She shrugged and hugged herself. "It would have been nice if I could have found two people for balance, but I guess it's more painful in a way if I take away the one person in the entire world who loves him."

"Uh."

"I'm not saying you hike his knees over your shoulders, Wright. But when I came to your office to talk about my brothers, I asked you about having faith in people. You tried to convince me of what a big, gooey heart you have. You mentioned him, how you'd even defended the man prosecuting this case, and I heard it in your voice." Lucy had stopped looking like she was hugging herself; now, her arms were all rigid angles. "You've already said that I'm smart. Are you going to try to convince me that I'm wrong about this?"

Phoenix squinted at her with his one open eye. Memories flooded back: the hero worship of a saved child, the college boy feeling that he was a knight putting on one piece of shining armor with each law class that he took. An adult finding an equal partner among all the pain of the years they'd missed, and the terrible year-long aftershock as those tragedies fell away. It was hard to say you didn't love someone when you'd built your entire life around them. "No." She was right, but the label sounded strange. "But you said that you might not kill me, after all. So there has to be another part to what you want to do to him."

"Open." When he'd dutifully opened his mouth and swallowed the other two aspirin tablets, Lucy smiled. "You're right. That's only one part of the equation." Phoenix waited, but she shook her head. "I'll call him from right here, Mr. Wright, so that you can tell him that you're still alive. And I don't care at all if you tell him that I'm ready to kill you. In fact, I hope that you do. But the other part needs to stay a surprise."

"But I took the aspirin!"

"And in about an hour, I'm sure you'll be glad for that. I'll check back when you're ready for more aspirin and see how your bruise is coming along."

"But. I took it."

She left without answering him, and Phoenix felt a teardrop fall to the dirt floor. It was as fat as that drop that had trailed down the water bottle.

Misery, pain, and fear swept him. The hope of his rescue faded, as much as he tried to cling to it, and a kernel of resentment grew in its place. Lucy hated him, but this wasn't his war. He wasn't the target; he was just in the way.

The fear wasn't only for him, though, and so that resentment toward Edgeworth stayed as just a seed. He'd been broken, beaten, and humiliated, and he might still end up as a corpse. But he wasn't the target.

So whatever she'd planned for Miles, it had to be somehow worse.


	7. Chapter 7

It had been a long time since nightmares filled Miles' sleep. He woke with a full-body shudder and clutched the sheets with tight fists. It was the same rigid position he'd woken to for fifteen years, when every night was another trip to his father's grave. Perhaps some part of him thought that he should be filling it, instead, and had forced him into that unnaturally composed position no matter how he drifted off to sleep. Every day had begun with him stretched out and ready for a coffin. Ever since his epiphany he'd discovered the simple wonder of waking up on his side, or even with his face smashed flat against the pillow.

But this was a coffin sort of morning.

"Still alive," he murmured. "You have to still be alive." Pess lifted her head from where she'd pillowed it on his chest. Her presence soothed his still-racing heart, and Miles wondered if it might not be a good idea to bend the rules on more nights than this. She was certainly shedding all over the sheets, but he did send everything out to a very good cleaner.

He turned off the alarm before it could sound; as usual, he'd woken five minutes before he'd set the buzzer, and as usual, he hadn't needed its backup. He slid from his sheets and stumbled to the bathroom to study just how badly the restless sleep had left its mark. Worse than he'd expected—he'd grown unaccustomed to a nightly schedule of psychological terror—but better than most men would have looked. Unaccustomed on that particular day or not, he did have years of practice.

With rigid, efficient motions, Miles splashed ice cold water on his face and the dark circles under his eyes obediently retreated. Next came a hot towel and a straight razor (it gave a closer shave), followed by a narrow-toothed comb and whatever Austrian-made styling product he'd been using ever since his childhood move to Germany. A company shipped it as needed; he signed the bill and focused on other things. After his toiletries had been attended to, his wardrobe followed: undershirt. Socks. Trousers. And then, decisions needed to be made.

Shirt: a fine cotton, rather than silk, as he had no idea where the day might take him. Waistcoat: expertly tailored with a faint black-on-black pattern of traditional paisley. Cravat. Jacket: from a local tailor, rather than a European hand. That only made sense, for an American cut for a jacket was slightly boxier and far more forgiving, and he would be in the field.

But, as he smoothed his lapels and felt the last piece of his wardrobe fall into place, Miles couldn't help but acknowledge the other elements to those clothing decisions. This particular shirt had French cuffs, and he'd chosen the cufflinks he'd worn on a notably satisfying day in court. Some illogical, buried part of him still thought they were lucky. His jacket's cut was tied to here, his childhood home, rather than his teenage years. And the waistcoat's embossed paisley bore more than a slight resemblance to feathers. Phoenix was still not allowed to be dead; Miles doubted very much that he possessed the regenerative powers of his namesake.

It was all very symbolic and utterly useless for actually finding the man. Miles made a derisive noise at his pointless, timewasting sentimentality, and walked to the kitchen with crisp steps. Maya was still asleep on the couch when he passed. She was contorted into a bizarre position with her face flat against the pillow, he noted with some envy. As she shifted and the blanket moved with her, he saw that she'd stripped down to her underwear. Blanching, he hurried through the kitchen door and resolved to give her plenty of time to wake and get dressed.

"I smelled food," Maya soon yawned, walking in and rubbing her eyes. Her initiate's robe was rumpled but serviceable, and thankfully present. "Nice apron."

Miles slid her breakfast onto a plate and gestured with the spatula. "Eat as much as you can. Time spent eating is time wasted once we have our goal in hand." He checked the oven clock as he removed the apron and hung it neatly: twelve minutes to seven. With any luck, that goal would be provided to them very soon.

"What is this?" Maya asked suspiciously. "It's eggs, but it's... green. I don't think you can cook."

"A spinach omelette." She hesitated. "Spinach has iron, it's good for you. _Eat."_

"Dinner was better," Maya grumbled as she obediently began shoveling food into her mouth. For all her complaints about forcing her to eat _spinach_, her plate vanished faster than his.

At 7:00:06, Miles' phone buzzed noisily against the granite countertop. "Detective, you're right on time."

"Yeah, I've been waiting to call, Mr. Edgeworth, so I didn't wake you up. I was..." A loud yawn sounded like it nearly cracked Gumshoe's jaw. "I was sleeping in my car for a couple of hours before I needed to go back to Detective Starr."

Miles' mouth thinned. "You've had this information for hours?" Before the apologies could start, he said with irritation, "No, I told you to call at seven, rather than as soon as you heard something. The important thing is that you clearly _have_ learned something about Sanders' whereabouts." Maya leaned in excitedly as Miles waited for his reply.

"I sure did, Mr. Edgeworth. I started asking around his neighborhood and people told me right where he'd gone. Some people were getting home late, so it was pretty easy to find people to talk to."

Miles blinked. "They did? They they weren't willing to talk to us."

"Yeah. Um. They, uh, remembered the two of you. You, uh... kinda didn't fit in around there." The last bit tumbled out in a sloppy heap, like Gumshoe hated to say it and hoped that Miles wouldn't actually make out any of the words. "It sounded like Sanders was pretty shaken up about everything that happened. He's up with a friend at Pyramid Lake, fishing."

"You're sure about this?" He'd heard the lake's name before, though Miles wasn't terribly familiar with it. He recalled that lake was at least an hour north of the city, maybe two in traffic, and they didn't have time to waste on a pointless drive.

"Two different people said it, sir. One was a nice old lady that said she was watching Sanders' house while he was gone." Though that was all Miles had expected to hear, Gumshoe continued, "I found all that out by one thirty or so—"

_Dammit. Well, it's not like we could have found Sanders and accosted him for information in the middle of the night, I suppose._

"-And spent the next few hours pulling up his history for you. Since I know you, ah, didn't check him out that much before you called him as a witness."

No, he hadn't. Phoenix had promised Miles that this witness had something very important to share with the court, and if he was wrong on that, he would never ask for another favor as long as they both lived. Then he'd slung around variations on "finding the truth" until Miles agreed to call Sanders to the stand, in part out of curiosity as to what light he might bring to the case and in part to shut Wright up.

"It's all in your email now, sir. The full report and all the files."

Miles clicked his phone to speaker mode and sat it on the counter. "Give me and Ms. Fey a rundown of Sanders, Detective, since you've already familiarized yourself with him."

"Oh, hey, pal." Another yawn.

"Hey, Gumshoe!" Maya smiled hugely at the phone. "Thanks for doing all of this! We'll find Nick today for sure! Mr. Edgeworth says he'll know right where to look for Nick once we talk to him!"

_I don't think I was quite that optimistic..._

"Yeah? Yeah! Yeah, I bet we will, pal! Okay! Dylan Sanders is 37 years old and divorced. He works as a mechanic at a place on Atlantic. Sounds like he's pretty good." This much Miles knew, and he made an impatient noise for Gumshoe to get on the useful information. "A lot of money goes to child support. I guess that's why he lives where he does."

"Why'd he get divorced?" Maya asked, and shrugged when Miles turned to her with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh. 'Inconceivable differences,' I think it was?"

Wonderful, the (misspoken) catch-all term that told them absolutely nothing.

"Sounds like he had a pretty rough time of it, sir. His wife filed the papers, and it didn't seem like it was his idea at all. And that all came just a year after the VA started denying his disability claims."

_...I am an idiot. A blind, thundering, irresponsible idiot._

"Uh... Mr. Edgeworth?" Maya asked hesitantly, and risked putting a hand on his shoulder. "That noise you're making is really weird. Did you swallow your tongue? Do you need CPR?"

Miles snatched the phone off the counter. _Even if I was admitting him as a witness as a favor to Wright, I still should have researched the man this much!_ "The VA? He was in the military?"

"Er. Uh. Yeah. Did I say something wrong, sir?"

"For how long? Where was he deployed? What branch? Why was he discharged?"

"That. Uh. Wow, things just got super intense. Lemmee find that spot in the report... here it is. He was in the Army, sir. He served in Iraq."

_Goddammit. For me to have overlooked this... I should have been tracking this man down immediately after going to Phoenix's apartment._ Miles felt as ill as he had when seeing that drying blood on the carpet.

"He, uh... let's see. Got injured in the line of duty and received an honorable discharge. Got a medal and everything. Hey, good for him!"

"What is your assessment of the man's character?" Miles asked. "Will it be safe for me to confront him?"

"Confront him? Oh, he seems like a great guy, from everything in the record and what people were saying on his street. I can't imagine you'd have any problems with him, sir."

"What's going on?" Maya mouthed.

Miles ignored her for the moment. "Thank you, Detective. I may be in touch, although I'll try not to interrupt your work with Starr. I think this may well be all that we need." He hung up without waiting for a goodbye, and with an irritated hiss, practically flung the bowl with Pess' breakfast down to the floor. "Let's go. Sanders isn't just their helpful neighborhood mechanic; he's close friends with Lucy." For all they knew, he could be sleeping with the attractive young woman next door.

"What?" Maya yelped, and followed him as he stormed out of his condo and down the hall. "How do you know that?"

Their footsteps on the stairs were too loud to hold a conversation over, and so he waited to answer her until they were in the garage. "How did Lucy escape her perjury charges?"

The girl had misrepresented herself to Miles as being abused by her terrible, violent big brothers, and shown a few old scars to demonstrate exactly why she was willing to testify against her own family. She'd been a quavering little girl in his office; on the stand and out of his control, she'd revealed her true purpose in volunteering as a witness: lying through her teeth to get her murderous family off the hook. The case seemed so straightforward that he hadn't even investigated enough to know that she'd spoken with Phoenix at his office, too.

He was doing a _terrible_ job with screening people on this case.

"After you guys figured out that her testimony couldn't have taken place when she said?" Maya thought back. "She convinced the judge that she'd gotten confused, and accidentally used... military... time..." Her mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide.

"And he accepted it," Miles said grimly, "because upon review, she'd peppered her testimony with so many obscure references that it was agreed that she truly did have an obsession with military culture." He texted his destination to the LAPD; they would want that siren to get them through the worst of the morning traffic on I-5. That done, he turned and smiled thinly at Maya. "And I think we know why Lucy Rhodes appeared in a jacket cut for someone twice her size, that was beyond threadbare and uses a camouflage pattern not seen since the turn of the century."

Her fist balled. "Let's go get him," Maya said with narrowed eyes, and slammed the other hand down on the siren. This time, she didn't need to brace herself when he shot out of an underground garage.

Their frantic pursuit lasted two blocks before Miles had to slow down to twenty miles per hour, then ten, even with the siren working to clear traffic. Rush hour had commenced and there was simply too much of it. "We'll be working against the flow of morning traffic as we head north," he tried to convince himself as he wove between cars that weren't moving quickly enough for his tastes. "This will clear soon enough."

Rush hour traffic clearing in Los Angeles was a fond dream at best, but they were at least in constant motion. That was more than the rest of the people on the roads could say, even those optimists in the carpool lane. Traffic was distinctly lighter by the time they reached Sun Valley, and he could set a constant pace of thirty, forty, fifty miles per hour. By the time the freeway angled upward and they began to pull out of the San Fernando Valley, he was able to turn the siren off. It still rang in his ears, and he suspected Maya had a headache to match the one pounding in his skull.

Sure enough, they both stayed silent through the last stretch of developed housing. Silence was a strange look on Maya Fey. By the time either of them seemed ready to speak again, they were well into the bare, rocky mountains north of Los Angeles. It was a clear day, yet the city had dropped out of sight behind them. Semi trailers chugged patiently up the steeply graded freeway in what he'd thought was the far right shoulder, but apparently served as a slow traffic lane for truckers who didn't want to overheat their engines on the long climb. Even most cars on the main road were driving five or ten miles below the limit.

Without civilization nearby, Miles felt exposed like a raw nerve. His car remained his sole comfort. Its V8 purred as the freeway vanished below their tires. Five or ten miles _over_ the limit was nothing for him, although he did consider turning the siren back on to excuse the excess speed. Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea. He couldn't take the noise. The siren's presence within the car had to be legal permission enough.

"It's really different," Maya abruptly said, startling him. "Being on this side of everything."

"On this side?" Miles repeated. "Do you mean hunting for a kidnapping victim, rather than being one yourself?"

"That," she allowed, "but I meant having the whole police force backing you up instead of trying to keep you from investigating things. It's kind of nice."

"But," Miles anticipated.

"But it doesn't really seem fair. I know that you're all trying to save lives, but we do, too."

That they did, and so he considered his answer with the gravity it deserved. Besides, it was a good distraction as they tried to make fast time on the last stretch to Pyramid Lake. "I believe it comes down to the relative scope of the dangers, Ms. Fey. You certainly do protect the innocent, but these are innocents who, through fault of their own or not, have been implicated in existing crimes. From case names you know that he represents the individual and I represent the state. Those aren't simply words. I have to be aware of forty _million_ innocents whose lives might be ruined or ended at any moment. You are on the side of his client. I am on the side of every person you meet."

"Oh." Maya twisted a lock of hair around her finger. "That sounds, uh, big."

Yes, he supposed this was a higher level of dialogue than she typically encountered at the Wright & Co. office. Thinking about Phoenix hurt, and Miles added, as much to soothe himself as her, "But both halves of that argument are very important. I can only fight so fiercely when I know that any flaws in the state's evidence will be identified." This case had reminded him of that need rather severely. If Phoenix hadn't met with Dylan Sanders, Jude Rhodes would have been sentenced to death simply for being a getaway driver. And with the rest of the case seeming so straightforward, Miles had been unforgivably sloppy in understanding every possible angle surrounding it. Being matched by Phoenix was one thing, but he'd never considered that a high school dropout who couldn't even afford new clothes would be able to outwit him.

_And those are not true faults of hers,_ Miles added grimly, _but arrogance has certainly shown me up these past few days._

"So if it's your job to protect everyone, then why does that detective hate you so much? Aren't you two on the same side?"

Miles glanced at her, then back to the road. He'd forgotten that Maya hadn't been around for Skye's trial. "It's... a long story." He tried to summarize it as best he could, though his gut still twisted at the acknowledgement that he hadn't simply coached witnesses or stifled truths during his darker days, but had actually gotten a man sentenced to death on forged evidence. That the LAPD had handed that evidence to him hardly mattered.

He wondered how SL-9 would have gone if Phoenix Wright had been standing opposite him.

"Oh," Maya said quietly as he finished. "Nick told me a little of what I missed when I was up at Kurain, but he didn't go into detail on some things. Like... like all of that." She studied her hands for a mile or two. "But you just said that Detective Starr isn't a good detective. Can we get someone else on the case?"

"What?" Miles frowned. "No, and I said nothing of the sort."

"But her testimony was all mixed up and she lied about how she caught Ms. Skye. How can we trust someone like her to find Nick? She hates lawyers."

"No. She did have a shameful performance there, I'll admit, but it's because she hates prosecutors. Not defense attorneys. She saw the chance to take down the Chief Prosecutor, and I'm sure she was salivating over the entire thing being associated with me, as well. We all have our weaknesses. Hers is, well, me. I'm sure she's giving it her all to find Wright, don't worry."

"Would she give it her all to find _you?_"

Miles couldn't help but smirk. "_Then,_ I might wish for another detective on the case."

"Angel or Gumshoe being responsible for saving your life. Pick one."

"Nrgh."

"Pick one!"

"I. Er. Gumshoe," Miles decided. "I can certainly fault his skill, but I can't ever fault the man's dedication."

"Yeah, he went crazy trying to impress you last night." Maya shot him a weighty look. "You should probably tell him thanks more than you did. Don't be a jerk, okay? He found out what we needed to know."

"I was not 'a jerk.' I did thank him."

"Yeah, but your thanks can sounds like slaps in the face."

Miles grumbled. He _had_ thanked the man as he hung up. Hoping that praising Gumshoe would stop Maya's complaints, he said, "He was a key factor in saving you, you know. He retrieved the evidence that turned the entire case around on Engarde." And then crashed his car in his enthusiasm to get that evidence to the courthouse, but she didn't need to hear that bit. Richard Gumshoe, idiot savant had to be an encouraging figure to have in mind as she considered Phoenix's inevitable rescue.

"We'll have to make it up to you," Maya said after another few miles.

This girl's thought process was bewildering. "You and Gumshoe? Make up what to me?"

"Not me and Gumshoe," Maya said, like Miles was the peculiar one. "Me and _Nick_."

"It seems to me as if we're all working on saving Phoenix, not only me."

"Yeah, but you reminded me about when I got kidnapped. You two guys worked together so hard to save me. I tried to be brave, but I was so scared, and I just... you saved me. And now Nick's in trouble, and so it's you and me rescuing him. It's always you helping, so we need to thank you. Thank you _nicely,_ that is, not like how you thank Gumshoe."

He gave her a slight smile without turning from the road.

"Or," Maya teased, in brighter spirits as they spotted the turnoff sign for Pyramid Lake, "you could just get taken by someone scary, too, and let the two of us rescue you!"

"You already have," Miles said.

"Oh," she said softly, and stayed quiet until they were parked. "This feels more like home," Maya said for an obvious topic change when they were standing on warm blacktop, near a small cluster of buildings and the lake beyond.

Miles eyed the landscape critically. It was as brown and bare as what they'd driven through on the freeway. Worse, it had been a dry year, and so the reservoir was topped with an ugly white waterline scar. All in all, he had no idea why someone would choose to spend their time here. His cell phone barely had service and he doubted there was a single building in sight with air conditioning.

"Mountains, I mean," Maya added. "My mountains are much prettier than these mountains. They have rivers and trees and nice buildings." She squinted into the distance, where a side road wound off through scrub trees that gave little shade. RV trailers and motorhomes dotted the landscape. "We don't have barbecue pits like those, though," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe I'll make that change as Master, someday."

Miles ignored her. Pretty mountains or not, the only thing he cared to have towering above him was a well-designed skyscraper. He dug through the trunk, past the emergency car equipment, and into the evidence kit that he kept handy for casework. All he needed was the small pair of binoculars, and he pocketed them. "Let's go. Hopefully Sanders is within view."

"What if he's not, and he's just out on the lake somewhere?" Maya looked suspiciously at a boat rental station as they approached the lake. "Do you know how to drive one of those?"

Miles thought back to one of his worst days of the past few years, and how he'd been forced to maneuver a battered speedboat back to a different boat rental, bewildered and alone. "I... can manage." They'd move in a direction vaguely like 'forward,' anyway.

Fortunately, there was no need to step into a boat. Dylan Sanders had some of the darkest skin that Miles had ever seen, so dark that sunlight made it gleam blue instead of gold. He'd stood out in the courthouse crowd, and he also stood out on a fishing boat gliding its way around the lake. As Miles watched Sanders through the binoculars, certain that the tiny man in the lenses was his man, Sanders noticed the two standing near the boat launch, pointed to them, and said something to his companion.

Then, to Miles' distinct surprise, the boat puttered to life and headed directly for them. Gumshoe's assessment of the man's character appeared to be correct. Few criminals would see a state prosecutor pop up for a surprise follow-up visit and head over to chat.

"Mister, uh, Prosecutor Sir," Sanders said respectfully when his friend had looped ropes around a pier and he'd hopped to the dock. "I can't say that I expected to see you here. At... at all."

"But you came right toward me," Miles pointed out. "For which I thank you." _See._ He could thank people just fine, _Maya._

"Well, I figured it had to be important if you drove all the way out here to talk to me. And that could only be you standing there. Even here in LA, I've never seen anyone else who, uh..." He wiggled his fingers at the base of his throat. "Wears one of those."

"It is important," Miles said, and turned away slightly as he tried to figure out the best way to approach this conversation. Sanders didn't give any indication of being unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement, but he was also close friends with Lucy. Miles found it hard to see how those two facts could co-exist, and he was getting very tired of not being able to understand what was going on.

Sanders' voice grew solemn. "What did she do?"

Miles looked at him, startled.

"Hey, Jim," Sanders said to his friend in the boat. "I packed some food in a cooler in the truck. Why don't you go get started on lunch, and put away the catches in the other bin? This fellow and I might need to talk for a little bit, first."

"Sure," said his friend warily. "Is something wrong?"

"Nah, nothing's wrong. You want a sandwich?" Sanders asked Maya, though without looking away from Miles. "I made plenty. I guess it'd be an early lunch for you, but we were on the lake before dawn."

"I can stay," Maya said uncertainly.

Miles glanced at the parking lot with plenty of other people nearby, and the pickups with truck beds open to the day above. He caught Maya's wrist and murmured to her, "Sanders appears to want privacy, and we need to make him talk. But don't take any risks. If you don't want to go with this man, I see a restroom near the beach. If you do go, don't get in the truck." He couldn't tolerate losing someone else right now.

Maya nodded, very seriously, and turned to Jim with a bright, broad smile. "You know me, I love to eat!"

"I, uh, don't know you at all," said Jim, rubbing the back of his head in confusion.

"Well, then let me introduce myself! I like food! Which you're going to share with me! Let's go!" Maya led him off with determination, still smiling brightly even as she toted a bucket full of bass.

"And now we have privacy," Miles noted after the sound of footsteps had faded. They could still hear the slap of water against the dock, and the far-off sound of laughing children as they played on a beach, but that was all meaningless chatter.

"Yup." Sanders swallowed. "So I'll ask you again: what did she do?"

Judging the situation as best he could, Miles barely resisted the urge to attempt to rub his so-called lucky cufflinks. With a deep breath, he risked telling the truth. "After giving me a threatening letter over her brothers' convictions, Lucy broke into the apartment of..." What could he even call Phoenix? 'The other lawyer you talked to?' 'The man defending Jude and Aaron?' Something old and tired, buried deep inside him, protested every label that ran through his mind. It was like his mouth worked on its own. "She broke into the apartment of my best friend, Phoenix Wright."

Sanders frowned. "The other lawyer. Didn't know you were friends." There was something about his face that shouted _kindness._ He was worn like an old pair of shoes in desperate need of polish, but that overwhelming sense of kindness spoke of someone who always made it obvious when he was friends with someone. It made the uncertainty about his feelings toward Lucy all the more confusing.

"I... try to maintain professional distance in the courtroom."

"You're good at it."

Miles laughed bitterly and glared at the bright sunlight reflecting off the lake. It was making his eyes water. "She broke into his apartment and... and assaulted him, quite violently. An abduction was then made. We're attempting to track the two down now."

"And you're hoping I'll be able to tell you," Sanders guessed, but the slow, uncertain way he said that made Miles' heart sink. "I'll answer any question you have, but I've got two questions of my own, first."

"All right."

"What you just told me... I understood all of it, but you were trying to hide a lot of things behind all those professional words." Sanders' face tightened, and he looked suddenly ten years older. "In plain English, what did she really do?"

"She hit him with a steel rod and cut him open with the remains of his glass coffee table," Miles said after a pause. His voice sounded strange; so tight and strained. And would the sun _please_ move behind a cloud? His eyes wouldn't stop _watering._ "There was blood... a significant amount of blood." Plain English. The man wanted plain English. "So much blood."

"Shit," Sanders said, and dropped his head. When he raised it again, his eyes were watering, too. "I'm sorry."

Miles nodded silently. He didn't trust his voice right then.

"Okay, then I promise I will answer _anything_, just like I said, but my second question is: why do you think I know where she is?"

_Because you have to. Because I don't know what else I can do, who else I can ask._ Miles took a deep breath and hoped that his voice wouldn't waver. "You gave her your old Army jacket, didn't you?"

Sanders froze, then sighed and nodded. "Yeah."

"You've told her old stories from your military days. She was able to fill her testimony full of enough references to make her look like an expert." It was hard not to treat Sanders like a witness on the stand. That approach would certainly fill Miles with more confidence, but this man had no legal obligation to talk to him. If Miles upset him, he might well drive away, and the one thin thread they had to cling to would snap. He chose his next words delicately. "I spoke with others on your street, and it sounds like almost everyone stays away from 'Lucifer.' But she knows about your Army days. You offered to fix her car."

"Lucifer," Sanders repeated, and laughed humorlessly. "You have indeed been talking to people in my neighborhood."

"I hope I haven't offended you." Referencing an insulting nickname might have been foolish, even with the care he'd taken. He'd meant to show how certain he was of all that he was saying, but...

"No, no. It's fine. I never called her that, but it was because I was trying to put some distance between us. She's the one who started calling herself Lucifer. She always hated 'Lucy.' Thought it was old-fashioned."

"So you _were_ close, but then... why were you trying to put distance between you?"

Sanders sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, and looked at him. "I see a concessions truck just set up in the parking lot. I need a drink for this."

A few minutes later, they were back in an isolated part of the shoreline. Sanders had a beer; Miles, an iced tea. "When Lucy was sixteen, her parents drove off a curve on the PCH," Sanders said without preamble.

Miles winced. The Prosecutors' Office was fond of holding retreats in San Francisco, and they were encouraged to carpool rather than fly, to 'encourage sustainability.' (It seemed to him that they could simply stay in their own city and save not only on jet fuel, but gas as well.) He was usually the only driver willing to risk the sharp turns and steep drops of the Pacific Coast Highway, rather than the less-than-scenic freeway trek through the Central Valley. That willingness was because of his car's handling. The Rhodes parents couldn't have afforded anything close to his vehicle, and it was all too easy to remember turns where a slow reaction could take a car right near the edge... or off it.

"They did it on purpose," Sanders added glumly, and Miles' eyes widened in surprise. "The family... they were hitting a rough patch. Way past rough. Looking back on a few conversations I had with them, and knowing now what they were planning to do... well, they were hoping the insurance money could pull their kids out of the hole they'd dug for them."

"That didn't happen," Miles guessed.

"They upped their coverage in the month right before they did it," Sanders sighed, and took a long drink. "They upped it a lot. That kicked off an investigation, and the wreckage got checked out like it wouldn't have, otherwise. No problems with the brakes, and it all got labeled 'insurance fraud.' The kids got nothing."

Miles felt a generalized pang of sympathy that vanished as soon as he remembered who those 'kids' were.

"Aaron was nineteen, so he was old enough to keep the family together and keep his brother and sister out of the foster system. They were happy about it, although in the end it would have been better to split them up. He did his best to try to make enough money to pay the mortgage, but the thing is..."

"Yes?" Miles prompted.

"I don't know if I should say this."

"Everything you share with me will only be used in this investigation."

"It's not _classified_ or anything, it's just..." Sanders took another big drink, and looked pained when he murmured, "Jude and Aaron are _morons._"

"Ah."

"Couldn't hold down a job, couldn't bring in a steady paycheck, and they were going to lose the house and each other. That was when Lucy stepped in. That girl, she's _smart._ She'd see commercials on TV and talk about how she was going to go to one of those night school programs and learn how to be a nurse, and I knew she could do it."

But clearly, that hadn't happened.

"I tried to look out for them. I thought the boys might do with some structure in their lives, but they didn't want to listen to me about a recruiter. Lucy would, though. So I talked to her about my Army days, and said that they might want to consider it. She might want to, too. They've got medical training in the service, you know. She could learn to be a nurse." Sanders smiled sadly. "For a while it seemed like she might do it. She'd come over to my place and help me work on my car, just so we could talk."

Dylan Sanders paid child support, Miles recalled. Gumshoe hadn't mentioned this, but he was suddenly very sure that support went toward a daughter.

"But things kept getting rougher for them," Sanders said softly, "and they needed a quick fix, and..."

"And?"

"And so Lucy got _mean_." The last word twisted the space between them like a knife. Miles didn't want to speculate, Sanders didn't want to continue, and so the silence hung there for a long, raw beat. "Her brothers couldn't think worth a damn, but they could hurt the people she wanted them to hurt. She was the barrel and they were the bullets; they went wherever she aimed. Jude and Aaron trusted their little sister, and now it was her looking out for them."

"A dangerous game to play."

"For a while, it worked for them. A long while, if I'm being honest. They were able to shake down money out of people, but eventually some of those people had friends, and so they needed to keep them in line, too, and..." Sanders shook his head. "I could see them heading down, fast, and eventually I just had to cut the rope and let them fall. I wasn't going to get mixed up in whatever Lucy was getting that family into."

Miles' heart sank again. Truth rang through the man's words, but if what he said was really accurate, it sounded like he hadn't been in close contact with Lucy for years. This explained so much they'd already encountered—the jacket, the Army references, Lucy in the master bedroom, a lack of fingerprints on file for her while her thuggish brothers were known criminals—and yet it was closing doors for what he needed to do now. "Then... why did you offer to fix their car?"

Sanders stood there long enough that Miles almost repeated his question, but then the man abruptly hiked up one leg of his cargo pants. They were the only people in sight not in short pants, Miles realized; with his formal trousers on, he hadn't thought to question Sanders wearing the same length. That analysis fled as soon as he saw what was under the pant leg: a smooth metal bar. Nodding at his surprise, Sanders let that leg fall, then hiked up the other. His original leg was still there, but was under a mass of puckered scar tissue. Burn scars, almost certainly. "There was an IED," he said slowly. "Command thought the road was clear and it wasn't."

Nodding mutely, Miles tried to force Gumshoe's voice out of his memories. _Got injured in the line of duty and received an honorable discharge. Got a medal and everything. Hey, good for him!_ A medal seemed a poor exchange for the agony this man had certainly gone through after that bomb blast. "I'm sorry."

"Not yours to apologize over." Sanders swallowed. "I woke up with part of me under our truck, but at least I was breathing. There was a dust storm that had made it tough to see, so it was hard, but I was breathing. I, ah." He squinted at the lake, and his eyes started watering again. "His name was Robin Graves. Robbie. From this little town in Arkansas, and there wasn't a day that went by when I didn't call him a hick and laugh at him, and he'd make a joke about the evil big city people, and. Yeah." He sighed. "He was my best friend."

The words sent Miles' eyes back to watering, too. Damn that reflected sunlight.

"It was hard at first, making money when I got home, even after my leg healed up. I'd learned about repair work in the service, but I couldn't stand to be around anything with an engine. Which, well, when you live in Los Angeles..." He shrugged and downed the rest of his beer. "I talked to brain docs for as long as the VA paid for it, and eventually I got it turned around in my head to where I'd keep people safe by keeping their cars safe. Then I got a handle on everything. It helped me fight off those demons in my head. That all probably sounds stupid."

"No, it doesn't. I'm a prosecutor because of when..." Miles wiped at one tear that he couldn't help but give its proper label. He inhaled and exhaled, hard. "My father was shot to death in the same elevator as me, and I still have to take the stairs." Admitting that to this near stranger was one of the most bizarre things he'd done in years, but from the startled look morphing into absolute and total empathy, he knew he'd done the right thing.

"So you understand," Sanders said. "These were kids whose folks died in a _car_, and even though I knew they were dangerous and this could be dangerous for me, I saw them driving a death trap of their own. I _had_ to fix it. I couldn't sleep at night. I saw them getting into an accident on the freeway, in a middle lane where no one could get to them easily, and in my head they were _burning._"

If Sanders hadn't fixed that car, the people at that studio might still be alive. Lucy would have had no way to transport Phoenix. And yet he understood, because Miles walked up to the twelfth floor every day at work.

"So I'm sorry," Sanders said. "I don't talk to Lucy. I can't tell you where she's taken your friend."

Miles nodded, his head bowed. Coming up here had been a terrible idea. He felt like an open wound.

"But," Sanders continued, and Miles' head snapped up, "I know exactly what that car has left to give before it dies. You climbed up the mountains to get here, the same as me."

Miles thought back to the steep grade, to the semi trucks inching along the outside lane.

"It can't do that. It can barely take a hill at all, and it had under fifty miles left on it before the entire thing fell apart. She was supposed to use those miles to find something else to drive, and obviously she didn't, but at least you know she's still in the city somewhere. And this family had _no_ friends left, and no money, so I don't see any way for her to get a different car unless she stole it."

"It's nearly fifteen miles between her house and his apartment."

"Then take that range down to thirty-five."

She was still in the city, within an hour's drive of Phoenix's apartment at the very most, and constrained by the natural geography. The police had been unable to find the car and no noise complaints to 911 had matched up with this case. An hour's drive. No big hills. Within that range, she needed isolation or insulation to shield any noise and a place to stash her car. Miles felt his heart start pounding; renewed hope was like a jolt of electricity straight into his chest. "Thank you. God, _thank you._"

Sanders smiled. "Sure. You're pretty okay for a lawyer."

"You might be the first person who's ever said that to me," Miles half-choked, half-laughed, and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. _I'm going to do it. I am going to save you._ "I, ah, need to..."

"Yeah, go, go, don't waste any more time. Good luck with your friend!"

"Yeesh," Maya said when he approached the pickup, and hopped off the bed where she and her companion had dug into lunch with enthusiasm. "Finally. Not that you haven't been great company, Jim—"

Jim held up his hands as if to say 'no offense taken.'

"But I am actually getting full, which I thought was impossible, and wait, have you been _crying?_"

Miles kept walking. "We're heading to the police. We need to establish a search area and start narrowing down the potential locations. Once we're on the road, I want you to call Starr and see if she's found out anything that can help us further limit our search. As well, we'll need to run searches on stolen cars just to eliminate the chance that she's in a different vehicle. I doubt she is, it would be a signal fire pointing toward her, but we need to check."

"You found out something?" Maya asked with delight as they both pulled their seatbelts on.

"I found out something." Miles let out a choked laugh as he shifted into gear and set off faster than the park probably wanted him to drive. He had _needed_ that conversation, on a deeper level than he'd known. "Here," he said to Maya, and handed her his phone. "The contacts are all in there."

She nodded and began hunting. Miles considered the requests he'd made and held up his hand before she could get too far into her to-do list. "But first, send a text. Pretend that you're me when you do."

"Okay, to who?"

"Detective Gumshoe."

"Okay... got him," Maya said, and poised with her thumb over the keypad. "What do you need him to look for?"

"Nothing just yet." Miles merged onto the freeway and poured on the gas. "Just tell him thank you."


	8. Chapter 8

_She doesn't want to kill me._

_But she will._

_She just doesn't care._

_Doesn't care if I live._

_But she doesn't want to kill him._

_Doesn't want to kill Edgeworth._

_Miles._

_So she's... going to kidnap him instead... going to... hurt... I don't... don't know._

At some point Phoenix drifted off again. He woke without being touched, waited through a fresh round of pain and dread, and fell asleep again when exhaustion outweighed the gnawing fear and hunger in his gut. The next time he woke was because of Lucy's finger trailing across his cheek. She traced his face lightly and murmured notes to herself, and didn't seem to care whether he was asleep or awake for it. He tried to figure out what the traced lines might mean and gave up when his fogged mind resisted the horrible pictures. Coherence was difficult to hold and time slipped away like water. Lucy was in and out of the shack, in and out, back and forth, up and down.

_Up and down?_ Phoenix blinked hard and tried to center himself. Whether from pain, hunger, or blood loss, he was verging on delirium. Although he no longer held any hope of rescuing himself, holding on to his sanity while in captivity was one struggle he intended to win. When his friends came for him, he'd answer their questions and provide evidence with his own body and lock this girl up for a long, long time.

He blinked again and returned to the present. Something was different. What was different? His arm was loose. Fear choked him. _No no no no keep me tied to the chair keep me tied don't get your axe don't cut it off don't!_ Gulping for air that wouldn't come, Phoenix jerked his freed arm back into place and tried to look calm, still, compliant.

His arm lifted despite himself and kept raising even as he struggled, and so Phoenix flailed with the rest of his body. The world tilted and he felt something hit him hard enough to bruise. Blood and dirt coated his tongue as he mouthed silent pleas. _Don't cut it off don't cut it off don't cut it off._

"Jesus, calm down," said Lucy's voice. It was coming at a strange angle, like she was crouched down at his ankles. The world lurched again and Phoenix felt the tip-tip-settle of his chair being lugged back to a sitting position. _I... I fell over. I hit the ground._ He spat and licked his lips, and again tasted the dirt from the floor. _Yep. Definitely delirium._ That was almost funny.

"I wasn't trying to run," Phoenix said hoarsely. He didn't know why his arm was free, but any untied movement in front of Lucy was a bad thing. Anything that might make her get that axe again was a bad thing. His filthy pants and shirt clung to him in spots where cuts had re-opened from his fall, but he could no longer pick out individual spots of pain. "I... you were lifting my arm? It wasn't me?" It was hard to think. "I need more water." He needed more blood, too.

"Here," Lucy said, bemused, as she held up another bottle for him. "And yes, I was lifting your arm."

It was easier to focus when he'd finished the water. How long had it been since the last bottle? "Food?" Phoenix asked hopefully. He didn't know whether he could keep anything down, but his body demanded that he at least try.

"I don't need you to eat," she said, and his shoulders sagged. "I just need you to stay alive long enough for... god, you're bleeding everywhere." With an irritated sigh, Lucy turned and left.

For the first time, the door stood open long enough that Phoenix's eyes were able to adjust to the sunlight outside. Working with his free arm to release the other was impossible; Lucy had to be right outside and he'd only be able to scrape a bit at the ropes before she came back. Instead, he studied the sliver of world beyond his shack and tried to find anything that might help him understand his situation. _It has to be a park._ There were pine trees and palms and jacarandas and eucalyptus: all the trees he'd grown up playing under. He could hear a mechanical thumping noise in the distance, and little else but the sound of water in a fountain or against a lake (pond? reservoir?) shore. Occasionally the barking of a dog or shouting of a child was carried on the wind, but it faded as soon as the gust did.

_Makes sense,_ he thought, even with his abuse-addled mind. _No one's come to check on me, and I've made noise. We have to be somewhere isolated._ Maybe... maybe the hills out toward San Bernardino? Down toward San Diego or up near Ventura? No, no, the air didn't feel damp enough to be near the coast. They were inland. His first guess was better. _East,_ Phoenix thought, satisfied. She expected to call Edgeworth and have him show up, so they had to still be near Los Angeles. The foliage looked right for the area, too, and all those green leaves told him that they hadn't gone so far that they'd hit desert. He had to be somewhere east of central Los Angeles but still firmly in the greater metropolitan area. Done.

That tiny victory filled his heart. After all, solving that mystery was more pleasant than thinking about how he might die. It was simpler to focus on something besides himself, too, and even his fear was fading as he gave his mind another challenge besides what was being done to his body and Lucy's secret plan for Edgeworth. _I don't know the area that well. Where are parks this big?_ Something about what he saw had the feeling of being up among hills, but even if he was right, he couldn't say how high or in which range.

Lucy's form darkened the doorway and Phoenix looked mutely down. "You haven't moved," she said.

"No."

"Good." She closed the door behind her and for a long beat everything was black to Phoenix's eyes. Lucy needed the adjustment time as well, and he could make out her features when she moved again. "You will want to keep staying very still."

"Why?" Phoenix asked, just before she pulled out the boxcutter knife. He sucked in air through his teeth and tried his best to stay rigidly still as she knelt between his legs and methodically began removing his pants. She left his boxers, and sliced away the bottom pieces of the pants where they were bound under the ropes, but otherwise she quite efficiently peeled him like an orange.

_She's right in front of me,_ Phoenix slowly realized, _and my arm is free._

Not daring to breathe, Phoenix inched his arm forward and balled his fist... or tried to. His hand wouldn't respond. Despite himself and how it might draw Lucy's notice, he looked at the fist he couldn't make. His left hand, the hand she'd pierced with the glass shard, was a mess of blood and tissue and red, swollen skin. The sight alone was stomach turning, but the realization that _he couldn't move his hand_ was beyond terrifying. Lucy was forgotten as he tried to move one finger, then the next, and only managed in wiggling his thumb a little. Otherwise, it was a useless and bloody piece of meat on the end of his arm.

"Did you really think I'd risk getting down here if you could grab me?" Lucy asked conversationally, right before she slammed something down on Phoenix's leg that made him gasp. She'd found something burning hot, something freezing, something... like a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sterile cotton pads from a first aid kit. "Hold still," she reminded him again, right before a needle dove into his flesh.

"My _hand_," Phoenix moaned as she stitched up a particularly deep wound on his thigh. "What did you do?"

"Between the glass and all the movement since then, there's probably a lot of nerve damage," Lucy said. She studied another deep cut before disinfecting it as well, and grinned at the noises it earned. "Remember, you can't die too quickly."

Should he be glad it wasn't his writing hand that she'd practically gutted? No. This was his court hand. He couldn't point, he couldn't slam it. Hell, even if he made it through this week alive, they still might have to take the entire hand off if infection set in any more than it already had. Tears filled his eyes as Phoenix stared at the wreck of his body. If he could feel pain, he was sure the wounds would be agonizing. He wished he could feel them.

Phoenix was helpless, trapped, had no idea what was happening to him... and was suddenly, violently angry. With a great heave, he wrenched his free arm around and slammed it into the side of Lucy's head. Pain rolled up his forearm as the mangled palm hit her and the rough, deep scab tore open. Unsteady laughter ripped out of him like glass pulling out of his skin. "I felt that," he wheezed. The nerves were there, the doctors would fix it, she hadn't _won._ Not yet.

"You hit me," Lucy said flatly, and stood. Phoenix's blood painted her cheek in a smeary palmprint.

"I felt that," Phoenix repeated, giggling. Maybe it wasn't like before, but he'd felt _something._ "You didn't wreck my hand."

"You're losing it," Lucy said.

Was she concerned about him? That was hilarious, and Phoenix couldn't stop laughing. And the way she'd looked when his limp arm smacked the side of her face... so startled and offended... she'd almost fallen... fallen back... on her ass in the dirt...

"You can feel this?" Lucy asked, grabbing his bloody hand, and Phoenix's delirium vanished. He swallowed silently. "Good."

Why the hell had he been laughing? Nothing was funny. It was hard to believe that he'd ever have the chance to laugh genuinely at something again. "That's what I came in here to do," she said, prying his fingers apart. Fear twisted deep inside his chest. "Before you knocked yourself over and I needed to keep you from bleeding out."

"I... I can't feel it," Phoenix said. It wasn't entirely a lie; he could feel pressure on his hand, but the parts that weren't numb tingled like the skin was asleep. "I snapped before, I was saying anything that came to... I..." He swallowed. "Whatever you're planning, I can't feel it, so it's pointless."

"I don't care if you can't feel it," Lucy said with the same ease she'd rejected the idea of feeding him, and brandished her boxcutter again. "But I suppose we're going to find out if you're telling the truth or not." As Phoenix's breath quickened, she pried back his ring finger so that it stood tall above the bloody back of his left hand. "The cut will be cleaner if you don't move," she murmured as the blade descended toward the side of his finger.

"Please don't," Phoenix whispered as the razor's edge touched the side of his finger, down near the palm where the skin arced away in a soft web.

"It doesn't matter," Lucy reminded him as the boxcutter slid upward, slicing a neat line along his finger. "You can't feel this. Remember?"

The worst part was that she was right. He was aware of the pain, but it was no worse than a paper cut. He was able to stare in mute, unblinking horror as Lucy split open his skin from palm to fingernail and he barely felt a thing. The cut was deep but thin, and less blood welled up than he expected. "I didn't feel much," Phoenix said, his voice shaking. "I was telling the truth. I'm sorry that I hit you, all right?"

"This wasn't to punish you," Lucy said as she studied the wound. "I don't care if you lie to me." _Not after you lied about saving my brothers,_ he could hear her sneer. "This is just... practice."

"Practice?" Phoenix asked.

For an answer, she dug her fingernails into the cut and slowly lifted his skin like a bandaid coming off. Phoenix cried out and she let the skin fall back, satisfied. "That should work," Lucy said with delight. Most of the remaining alcohol was poured on his bleeding finger; even through the damage to his hand, that felt like boiling water hitting his wound. Phoenix shuddered. "When he's here," Lucy purred, "I'll do that to your index finger. But I won't stop. I'll peel all the skin right off. How do you think he'll like seeing that?"

Phoenix wanted his delirium back. If he was going to snap—and he felt very close to it—falling into never-ending laughter seemed like his best ticket out of that shack. Had he ever thought that he was actually going to walk free? How could he have been so foolish? He'd be leaving in a body bag. Wouldn't it be better to enjoy his last hours, even if the man laughing with his face wasn't really Phoenix Wright?

_My body will be enough evidence on its own. I don't need to be awake inside it._ He could give up and flee from all the pain, all the fear. He just had to give up. _Give up. Give up._

He couldn't. The same damned stubbornness that never let him give up on a client wouldn't give up on himself, either. Even as Phoenix tried, really _tried_ to lose his grip on the world, his subconscious rebelled just as strongly. Failure was not an option. He simply couldn't do it.

Tears of frustration leaked free as Lucy bandaged his finger against infection. Every movement she made mocked him; he was like a cow being cared for just long enough to stumble into the slaughterhouse. He hissed in pain as she pressed on his palm hard enough to expel bloody pus from the swollen curves, then again as she applied alcohol to that cut with the same efficiency. It wasn't even a matter of having faith in himself like he had in his clients; there was nothing Phoenix could do and he damned well knew it. He was simply too willful to quit.

His faith would have to rest in others, then.

_I'm somewhere isolated. Maybe in a park. There's water nearby. Isolated. Park. Water. Isolated. Park. Water._

He didn't even know who he was talking to.


End file.
